“The slow, the never ending approach to truth consists in perpetually forming and testing hypotheses, accepting those at which at the time seem to fit the facts and rejecting the others.”

— James Frazer , book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 5, The Magical Control of the Weather.

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James Frazer 50

Scottish social anthropologist 1854–1941

J. R. Partington (1886–1965) British chemist

Introduction
Higher Mathematics for Chemical Students (1911)

“A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth does not need the assistance of miracle. A fact will fit every other fact in the Universe, because it is the product of all other facts. A lie will fit nothing except another lie made for the express purpose of fitting it.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

“A startup is in reality a 'faith-based enterprise' on day one. To turn the vision into reality and the faith into facts (and a profitable company), a startup must test those guesses, or hypotheses, and find out which are correct.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Source: The Four Steps to the Epiphany (2013), p. 83

“Without these experimental tests, very few physicists would have accepted general relativity. There are many hypotheses in physics of almost comparable brilliance and elegance that have been rejected because they did not survive such a confrontation with experiment. In my view, the human condition would be greatly improved if such confrontations and willingness to reject hypotheses were a regular part of our social, political, economic, religious and cultural lives.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 7, “Lovers and Madmen” (p. 193)

“We are content to accept without testing any belief that fits in with our prejudices and whose truth is necessary for the satisfaction of our desires.”

Susan Stebbing (1885–1943) British philosopher

As quoted in Thinking to Some Purpose (1939), p. 204

“Of a number of variant hypotheses about the same facts, that one is true which shows why facts, which in the other hypotheses remain unrelated, are as they are, i. e., which demonstrates their orderly and rational mathematical connexion.”

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer

Vol. I, p. 238
Joannis Kepleri Astronomi Opera Omnia, ed. Christian Frisch (1858)

“Theories are only verified hypotheses, verified by more or less numerous facts. Those verified by the most facts are the best, but even then they are never final, never to be absolutely believed.”

Claude Bernard (1813–1878) French physiologist

Introduction à l'Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale (1865)

“Accept only that which stands to your reason. Never accept anything merely because it is preached by some great leader. Test its truth on the touchstone of your intellectual discrimination.”

K. B. Hedgewar (1889–1940) Founding leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

Dr. K.B. Hedgewar, Quoted from Talreja, K. M. (2000). Holy Vedas and holy Bible: A comparative study. New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan.

“He is the Ultimate Rest unbounded: He has spread His form of love throughout all the world.
From that Ray which is Truth, streams of new forms are perpetually springing: and He pervades those forms.”

Kabir (1440–1518) Indian mystic poet

Songs of Kabîr (1915)

“…women are not interested in truth or romance but only in facts whether they are true or not, just so they fit all the other facts.”

William Faulkner book The Town

Gavin Stevens in Ch. 17; also in this chapter Gavin Stevens reflects — twice — that men are "interested in facts too".
The Town (1957)

“The slow, the never ending approach to truth consists in perpetually forming and testing hypotheses, accepting those at which at the time seem to fit the facts and rejecting the others.”

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