“No scientist ever believes that he has the final answer or the ultimate truth on anything.”

— Carroll Quigley

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 1, Scientific Method and the Social Sciences, p. 34

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Carroll Quigley79

American historian 1910–1977

Roger Smith (executive) (1925–2007) CEO

“Believe that problems do have answers. Believe that they can be overcome. Believe that they can be handled. And finally, believe that you can solve them.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

‪You Can If You Think You Can‬ (1987), p. 36

“The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he's one who asks the right questions.”

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) French anthropologist and ethnologist

“The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"On Truth" in Damn! A Book of Calumny (1918), p. 53
1910s
Context: The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene swine. Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation. But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Huxley—and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Darwin?... They are laughing at Nietzsche yet...