Conjecture Quotes

No state sorrier than that of the man who keeps up a continual round, and pries into “the secrets of the nether world,” as saith the poet, and is curious in conjecture of what is in his
neighbour’s heart.

Given a conjecture, the best thing is to prove it. The second best thing is to disprove it. The third best thing is to prove that it is not possible to disprove it, since it will tell you not to waste your time trying to disprove it. That’s what GГ¶del did for the Continuum Hypothesis.

Their origin is commonly unknown; for the practice often continues when the cause has ceased, and concerning superstitious ceremonies it is in vain to conjecture; for what reason did not dictate, reason cannot explain.

It is putting a very high price on one’s conjectures to have someone roasted alive on their account.

I think everybody handles things very differently and you can conjecture, but until you’re put in that situation, you really don’t know.

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age

Ah! my dear Watson, there we come into those realms of conjecture, where the most logical mind may be at fault. Sherlock Holmes speaking with Dr. Watson.

The appearance and retirement of actors are the great events of the theatrical world; and their first performances fill the pit with conjecture and prognostication, as the first actions of a new monarch agitate nations with hope and fear.

We hate the very idea that our own ideas may be mistaken, so we cling dogmatically to our conjectures.

We must consider how very little history there is–I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were fought, we can depend upon as true; but all the coloring, all the philosophy, of history is conjecture.

Sometimes, I look out at nature and I think, ‘Everything here is obeying my conjecture.’ It’s a wonderfully narcissistic feeling.

A mathematician experiments, amasses information, makes a conjecture, finds out that it does not work, gets confused and then tries to recover. A good mathematician eventually does so – and proves a theorem.

History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.

It is clear that there is no classification of the Universe that is not arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what kind of thing the universe is.

Such self-transformation is the most difficult and dangerous challenge to the imagination, and it is the most rewarding. Meeting it is only possible for the person whose mind is open to contradictions and well-practiced in free conjecture.

The ocean is the last frontier of human empirical knowledge; even the contours on that eighth-grader’s globe are the product of a mix of scientific measurement, inference and conjecture.

In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions.

However useful computer models may be, the one thing they cannot be is evidence. Computer climate models are simply conjectures.

In the discovery of secret things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators of the common sort.

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

The highest reach of a news-writer is an empty Reasoning on Policy, and vain Conjectures on the public Management.

We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore.

Without the knowledge of the true number of the people, as a principle, the whole scope and use of keeping bills of birth and burials is impaired; wherefore by laborious conjectures and calculations to deduce the number of people from the births and burials, may be ingenious, but very preposterous.

The atheist risk everything for the present and the future, on the basis of a belief that we are uncaused by any intelligent being. We just happen to be here. That one is willing to live and die in that belief is a very high price to pay for conjecture.

The world has arisen in some way or another. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin’s theory, like all other attempts, to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural. I believe he has not even made the best conjecture possible in the present state of our knowledge.

To die for an idea is to set a rather high price upon conjecture.

Our conjectures pass upon us for truths; we will know what we do not know, and often, what we cannot know: so mortifying to our pride is the base suspicion of ignorance.

A satirist, often in danger himself, has the bravery of knowing that to withhold wit’s conjecture is to endanger the species.

Everyone has this conjecture that action films are somewhat less prestigious than dramatic films. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve done them both and this is hard and dangerous.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.

Can you define “plan” as “a loose sequence of manifestly inadequate observations and conjectures, held together by panic, indecision, and ignorance”? If so, it was a very good plan.

We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture.

A private man has always the liberty (because thought is free) to believe or not believe in his heart those acts that have been given out for miracles, according as he shall see what benefits can accrue by men’s belief, to those that pretend, or countenance them, and thereby conjecture whether they be miracles or lies.

My reasons are the same as for any mathematical conjecture: (1) It is a legitimate mathematical possibility, and (2) I do not know.

You can’t know what the future holds, though you might conjecture on it, and if you’re psychic, you might venture a guess.

I’m very happy for others to engage in conjecture, but if I was ever conscious of what I’m thinking about when I’m writing, oh my God, I’d be totally lost.

Experience, already reduced to a group of impressions, is ringed round for each one of us by that thick wall of personality through which no real voice has ever pierced on its way to us, or from us to that which we can only conjecture to be without.

Far from creating a new formalism, what these can yield is something far transcending surface values since they not only embody form as beauty, but also form in which intuitions or ideas or conjectures have taken visible substance.

It seems likely that Jesus, being a scholarly young man, learned some Hebrew, but that’s conjecture. It’s more likely that Jesus spoke some Greek, as this language dominated the region after the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century.

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.

No one but yourself knows whether you are cowardly and cruel, or loyal and devout; others do not see you; they surmise you by uncertain conjectures; they perceive not so much your nature as your art.

The purpose of life is to conjecture and prove.

To do mathematics is to engage in an act of discovery and conjecture, intuition and inspiration; to be in a state of confusion в€’ not because it makes no sense to you, but because you gave it sense and you still don’t understand what your creation is up to.

You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.

A film carries six fine arts – it consists of architecture, painting, music, writing or literature, photography and performance. It’s a conjecture of all these things and yet based on literature.

People don’t know what goes on in my private life, so they have to make conjecture from something that is photographed.

And I think that at a certain point, after all the time and all the conjecture and everything that had kind of gone on surrounding this show, I think that Mitch just felt like it was time to let it go. It was best for the show.

A few of the sublimest geniuses of Rome and Athens had some faint discoveries of the spiritual nature of the human soul, and formed some probable conjectures, that man was designed for a future state of existence.

Pretty much every night of their lives, my 8-year-old sons have absorbed themselves entirely in books. As toddlers, they pointed out pictures, made conjectures; lately, we find them in their bunk beds embarked upon two-hour comic-reading benders.

I desire that your conjectures should not reach beyond your creative will. Could you create a god? Then do not speak to me of any gods.

The artist may be well advised to keep his work to himself till it is completed, because no one can readily help him or advise him with it… but the scientist is wiser not to withhold a single finding or a single conjecture from publicity.

I shall not mingle conjectures with certainties.

For several weeks, I have been the subject of leaked stories, conjecture, and false attacks about a land exchange. None of them bear any resemblance to the truth, including the rumor that I am planning on resigning.

If there are other worlds elsewhere in the universe, I would conjecture they are governed by the same laws of natural selection.

OBSERVATORY, n. A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of their predecessors.

Mathematicians use intuition, conjecture and guesswork all the time except when they are in the classroom.

The rules of scientific investigation always require us, when we enter the domains of conjecture, to adopt that hypothesis by which the greatest number of known facts and phenomena may be reconciled.

The mind revels in conjecture. Where information is lacking, it will gladly fill in the gaps.

I think now I’m being taken a little more seriously. That’s pure conjecture on my part.