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Sleaze is a point by point refutation of elegance. -- Mason Cooley
Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. -- Benjamin Disraeli
A hypothesis is something which looks as if it might be true and were true, and which is capable of verification or refutation by comparison with facts. -- Charles Sanders Peirce
Contend not in wisdom with a fool, for thy sense maketh much of his conceit; And some errors never would have thriven, had it not been for learned refutation. -- Martin Farquhar Tupper
I'm the kind of person who embarks on an endless leapfrog down the great moral issues. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal and rebut the refutation. Endlessly. -- Tom Stoppard
Mathematics does not grow through a monotonous increase of the number of indubitably established theorems but through the incessant improvement of guesses by speculation and criticism, by the logic of proofs and refutations. -- Imre Lakatos
Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies. -- George Eliot
The risk for a woman who considers her helpless children her "job" is that the children's growth toward self-sufficiency may be experienced as a refutation of the mother's indispensability, and she may unconsciously sabotage their growth as a result. -- Letty Cottin Pogrebin
The Americans are the living refutation of the Cartesian axiom, "I think, therefore I am": Americans do not think, yet they are. The American 'mind', puerile and primitive, lacks characteristic form and is therefore open to every kind of standardization. -- Julius Evola
It will be the mistake of your life if you go into print in your own defence [sic]. Your denial will reach a new set of people andstart them to talking, while the ones who read the original charges will never see the refutation of them. -- Susan B. Anthony
The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be believed only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called faith. -- Robert Green Ingersoll
The economic and social theories used by those who take part in the social struggle ought to be judged not by their objective value but primarily for their effectiveness in arousing emotions. The scientific refutation of them which can be made is useless, however correct it may be objectively. -- Vilfredo Pareto
Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her. And we must hazard them to win our prize. Those among us who are unwilling to expose their ideas to the hazard of refutation do not take part in the scientific game. -- Karl Popper
Liberalism makes this mistake in regard to private property and Marxism makes it in regard to socialized property... The Marxist illusion is partly derived from a romantic conception of human nature... It assumes that the socialization of property will eliminate human egotism... The development of a managerial class in Russia, combing economic with political power, is an historic refutation of the Marxist theory. -- Reinhold Niebuhr
The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. -- Mark Twain
An alternate explanation is not a refutation. -- Greg Koukl
Killing is the ultimate refutation of our own humanity. -- Kevin Sites
The air itself was ebony, like the denial, the refutation, of the idea of light. -- Martin Amis
It was one thing to have guessed it, another to have had that guess confirmed beyond possibility of refutation. -- Arthur C. Clarke
There is no idea that does not carry in itself a possible refutation, no word that does not imply its opposite. -- Marcel Proust
I'm not quite pompous enough to think of myself as an educator or a man capable of definitive refutation of falsehoods. -- John Shirley
Yet again, unscientific claims were being circulated broadly, but the scientists' refutation of them was published where only fellow scientists would see it. -- Naomi Oreskes
The refutation of suicide: is it not inelegant to abandon a world which has so willingly put itself at the service of our melancholy? -- Emile M. Cioran
There is no refutation of Darwinian evolution in existence. If a refutation ever were to come about, it would come from a scientist, and not an idiot. -- Richard Dawkins
I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation. -- Tom Stoppard
Philosophy itself cannot but benefit from our disputes, for if our conceptions prove true, new achievements will be made; if false, their refutation will further confirm the original doctrines. -- Galileo Galilei
All scientists know of colleagues whose minds are so well equipped with the means of refutation that no new idea has the temerity to seek admittance. Their contribution to science is accordingly very small. -- Peter Medawar

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