Beauty in Deep Understanding

A rose is a rose is a rose; but the examined rose is a sonnet. 

Natalie Angier, in The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

Strength of Conviction and Truth

This quotation applies to any conviction, scientific or not.

I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not. The importance of the strength of our conviction is only to provide a proportionately strong incentive to find out if the hypothesis will stand up to critical evaluation.

 Peter Medawar, in Advice to a Young Scientist