In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Stephen Jay Gould

I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change.

A. R. Ammons

Your trip in this life is very provisional, but the best thing you can do in your life to live in the right way is to take every day as a great opportunity to do what you can and when you're as lucky as I have been in life in getting so much attention and exposure, you learn that you can move mountains with a very small effort.

Alex Zanardi

Of course, economic forecasts must be revised when new information arrives and are thus necessarily provisional.

Ben Bernanke

Knowledge in the Internet Age - networked knowledge - is becoming more like what knowledge has been in the past few hundreds years for scientists: it's provisional; it's a hypothesis that is waiting to be disproved.

David Weinberger

I grew up in the theater. I began my career at 3. That was the first time I stepped onto a provisional stage.

Demian Bichir

We wait here to meet the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam to discuss together a ceremony of orderly transfer of power so as to avoid any unnecessary bloodshed in the population.

Duong Van Minh

The task which we have set ourselves is simply to show why and for what purpose we hold that standpoint during most of our lives, and why and for what purpose we are provisionally obliged to abandon it.

Ernst Mach

For me, this world of questions and the provisional, this chase after an answer that was always put off to the next day, all that was euphoric. I lived in the future.

Francois Jacob

In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of rational evidence, I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist.

H. P. Lovecraft

Apparent contradictions between religion and science often have been the basis of bitter controversy. Such differences are to be expected as long as human understanding remains provisional and fragmentary.

Henry B. Eyring

Whether we start with a provisional status and legal permanent residence... or we set up some other way to assimilate legally, you can't ever put in something that says, 'You can never become a citizen.' That's un-American.

Jeff Denham

Karaoke was my family's happy secret. In those early years in America, like many immigrants, my parents struggled with poverty and loneliness, but they also built provisional families, and inside our bubble there was joy, understanding, an intimate language I could never translate - and above all there was song.

Jenny Zhang

Privilege is provisional. It can be denied, withheld, offered grudgingly, and summarily withdrawn.

Margo Jefferson

The... provisional government unwaveringly believes that it can solve all the present problems together with the broad masses of Ethiopia. However, we can do this only if all the people come out in unison to implement our planned undertakings.

Meles Zenawi

In the Steven F. Austin Colony, which was the first colony, Texans first established a provisional government in 1835 with the intention of writing a declaration of independence soon after.

Michael McCaul

Great novels are maps of complication, leading nowhere in particular, taking stances only provisionally and obliquely, happy to be tangled and to lack as many answers as the people they seek to depict.

Michelle Dean

Scientific knowledge is, by its nature, provisional. This is due to the fact that as time goes on, with the invention of better instruments, more data and better data hone our understanding further. Social, cultural, economic, and political context are relevant to our understanding of how science works.

Priyamvada Natarajan

In this context, social consensus, and institutions that embody this consensus, must be made effective in order for democratization not to be abused as a provisional instrument to establish an anti-democratic regime.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Stephen Jay Gould