Evidence Quotes
155 quotes
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure."
"I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess."
"Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash."
"[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence."
"The most confused you will ever get is when you try to convince your heart and spirit of something your mind knows is a lie."
"It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest callings.[Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Time Magazine, August 7, 2005]"
"In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence."
"I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be."
"Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence."
"It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition."
"The difference between faith and insanity is that faith is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence, whereas insanity is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence."
"...and when is enough proof enough?"
"The thing is, it's very dangerous to have a fixed idea. A person with a fixed idea will always find some way of convincing himself in the end that he is right"
"Faith is not something that goes against the evidence, it goes beyond it. The evidence is saying to us, 'There is another country. There is something beyond mere reason'."
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."
"I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water."
"Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value the may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder."
"The creation of man is evidence for the love of God, the preservation of man is evidence for the patience of God, and Christ is evidence for the forgiveness of God. It is when we are wrapped up in our own little peeves that we begin to displace His benevolence with malevolence."
"Winners were not born winners; they learnt and practiced how to win and they have it! Everyone who gives a great testimony about his/her life begins with a beginning that was "inadequate"until something happened... an a breakthrough became evident!"
"I have the documents. Documents, proof, evidence, photograph, signature. One day you raise your right hand and you are American. They give you an American Pass port. The United States of America. Somewhere someone has taken my identity and replaced it with their photograph. The other one. Their signature their seals. Their own image. And you learn the executive branch the legislative branch and the third. Justice. Judicial branch. It makes the difference The rest is past."
"We may not yet know the right way to go, but we should at least stop going in the wrong direction."
"Unless the inquiry has been so exhaustive as to explore every possibility, the lack of evidence should never be used to ground a statement of fact. Unlikelihood certainly, but no more. A prematurely assumed fact blocks further inquiry."
"The search for truth takes you where the evidence leads you, even if, at first, you don't want to go there."
"Those irritations and uneasiness you are faced with are evidence that you have an assignment to fulfill."
"I must never equate the degree of pain as evidencing the incorrectness of a decision, for if I do I will default on some of the most critical decisions I should have ever made."
"All of these teeth had once been in real, live people. They had talked and smiled and eaten and sang and cursed and prayed. They had brushed and flossed and died. In English class, we read poems about death, but here, right in front of me was a poem about death too."
"In the business people with expertise, experience and evidence will make more profitable decisions than people with instinct, intuition and imagination."
"For as long as we are led by belief, we can never know anything for certain. It is not enough to believe or to have faith, we must know beyond all doubt. For that, we have no other option, but to search, question and investigate! There is no shame in not having found God, Brahman or the Great Spirit, but it is gravely ignorant to dismiss their existence on hearsay."
"Well, did he do it?"She always asked the irrelevant question. It didn't matter in terms of the strategy of the case whether the defendant "did it" or not. What mattered was the evidence against him -- the proof -- and if and how it could be neutralized. My job was to bury the proof, to color the proof a shade of gray. Gray was the color of reasonable doubt."
"It is a pity he did not write in pencil. As you have no doubt frequently observed, the impression usually goes through -- a fact which has dissolved many a happy marriage."
"My main reason for scepticism about the Huxley/Sagan theory is that the human brain is demonstrably eager to see faces in random patterns, as we know from scientific evidence, on top of the numerous legends about faces of Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or Mother Teresa, being seen on slices of toast, or pizzas, or patches of damp on a wall. This eagerness is enhanced if the pattern departs from randomness in the specific direction of being symmetrical."
Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
"Experience cannot beat logic, and interpretations of observational evidence which are not in line with the laws of logical reasoning are no refutation of these but the sign of a muddled mind (or would one accept someone’s observational report that he had seen a bird that was red and non-red all over at the same time as a refutation of the law of contradiction rather than the pronouncement of an idiot?)."
"For the most part, people strenuously resist any redefinition of morality, because it shakes them to the very core of their being to think that in pursuing virtue they may have been feeding vice, or in fighting vice they may have in fact been fighting virtue."
"Winners were not born winners; they learnt and practiced how to win and they have it! Everyone who gives a great testimony about his/her life begins with a beginning that was "inadequate" until something happened... an a breakthrough became evident!"
"You will need an evidence to show the world that you didn’t waste your time here on earth. Generations to come should benefit from the products of your time converted."
"You will need an evidence to show the world that you didn’t waste your time here on earth."
"Poetry is the essence and evidence of life."
"It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's highest cal"
"Mere lack of evidence, of course, is no reason to denounce a theory. Look at intelligent design. The fact that it is bollocks hasn’t stopped a good many people from believing in it. Darwinism itself is only supported by tons of evidence, which is a clear indication that Darwin didn’t write his books himself."
"For God to prove himself on demand, physically, would be a grave disappointment, and the strongest Christians should be considerably grateful that he chooses not to do so. The skeptic endlessly demands proof, yet God refuses to insult the true intelligence of man, the '6th sense', the chief quality, the acumen which distinguishes man from the rest of creation, faith."
"Scientists can test only what they do not take for granted. That can make studying familiar phenomena particularly challenging...This may be especially true of masculinity, femininity and sexuality, because certain ideas abut gender and sexuality are so broadly shared in our culture"
Rebecca M. Jordan-Young, Brainstorm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences
"Based on the medical evidence that clearly states that being above 10,000 feet is hazardous to the health of sea level adapted humans, it is clear that all of the manned facilities on top of the 13,796 feet Mauna Kea summit in Hawaii should be removed and the summit restored back to its native environment."
"The hand of God is wonderfully evident at those times when He pens stories whose lines we ourselves are far too fearful to pen or whose imaginations are far too limited to envision. And I would unashamedly suggest that the Christmas story is that very story."
"What baseball managers did do, on occasion, beginning in the early 1980s, was hire some guy who knew how to switch on the computer. But they did this less with honest curiosity than in the spirit of a beleaguered visitor to Morocco hiring a tour guide: pay off one so that the seventy-five others will stop trying to trade you their camels for your wife. Which one you pay off is largely irrelevant."
"So why don't they face us... examine our evidence, debate, talk... act like real historians instead of thought-police? Why shut us out of the media, pass laws against our speaking, persecute us, sue us, and vilify us?"
"The leader’s joy is the success of change, the evidence of progress and the actualization of a better life."
Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
"When considering the topic of spirituality or religion, I would encourage you to look at Christianity first. It is a testable religion. That is, it is based on evidence. The evidence is philosophical and historical. It can be examined and then we can all make our decision."
Jon Morrison, Clear Minds & Dirty Feet: A Reason to Hope, a Message to Share
"Despite my best effort to make myself as large as absolutely possible, life will always be larger than me. That simple fact makes God not only a likelihood, but a necessity."
"Reason is neutral. It has no biases. It has no agendas. There are no personal interests at stake. Reason simply says, “Here is the data, be responsible with it.” As such, reason is impartial."
Showing 50 of 155 quotes