Evidence Quotes

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

~ Henry David Thoreau

It necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, and of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among many other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. It is today the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. And nothing warrants the supposition - or the hope - that on this score our position is ever likely to be revised. There is no scientific concept, in any of the sciences, more destructive of anthropocentrism than this one.

~ Jacques Monod

Documentary evidence says where there is smoke there is fire, be it holy smoke or otherwise.

~ Christina Engela

In medical science, as in daily life, it was unwise to jump to conclusions

~ Albert Camus

Religious faith depends on a host of social, psychological and emotional factors that have little or nothing to do with probabilities, evidence and logic.

~ Michael Shermer

Logic stays true, wherever you may go,So logic never tells you where you live.

~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

Using the scientific knowledge that we currently possess, we can take simple logical steps, backed by the strongest evidence that we have, to come to the best and most reasonable conclusion that God is the cause of everything - all without ever taking even a single step of blind faith.

~ Lewis N. Roe

Mathematics had never had more than a secondary interest for him [her husband, George Boole]; and even logic he cared for chiefly as a means of clearing the ground of doctrines imagined to be proved, by showing that the evidence on which they were supposed to give rest had no tendency to prove them.

~ Mary Everest Boole

People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.

~ Blaise Pascal

Perhaps the most general and most important mental habit to instill is an appreciation of the folly of trying to draw conclusions from incomplete and unrepresentative evidence. An essential corollary of this appreciation should be an awareness of how often our everyday experience presents us with biased samples of information.

~ Thomas Gilovich

The less evidence we have for what we believe is certain, the more violently we defend beliefs against those who don't agree.

~ Neil Degrasse Tyson

The difference between my beliefs and having a religious faith is that I am prepared to change my views in light of new evidence, but someone of a religious faith will just stick their fingers in the ears and say: 'I'm not listening, there's nothing you can say that will make me change my mind.

~ Jim Al-Khalili

The atheist might have no proof for the supernatural, but they also have no proof against it. If we start at a neutral position of not knowing, we can't move away from it until we have proof or evidence either way.

~ Lewis N. Roe

Now, if the writers of these four books [Gospels] had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears cropt for perjury, and would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books, that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration, and as the unchangeable word of God.

~ Thomas Paine

All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over Lestrade's facts.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Laughter is a tangible evidence of hope.

~ Michael Jr.

We have to laugh. Because laughter, we already know, is the first evidence of freedom.

~ Rosario Castellanos

The witch-hunt narrative is now the conventional wisdom about these cases. That view is so widely endorsed and firmly entrenched that so widely endorsed and firmly entrenched that there would seem to be nothing left to say about these cases. But a close examination of the witch hunt canon leads to some unsettling questions: Why is there so little in the way of academic scholarship about these cases? Almost all of the major witch-hunt writings have been in magazines, often without any footnotes to verify or assess the claims made. Why hasn't anyone writing about these cases said anything about how difficult they are to research? There are so many roadblocks and limitations to researching these cases that it would seem incumbent on any serious writer to address the limitations of data sources. Many of these cases seem to have been researched in a manner of days or weeks. Nevertheless, the cases are described in a definitive way that belies their length and complexity, along with the inherent difficulty in researching original trial court documents. This book is based on the first systematic examination of court records in these cases.

~ Ross Cheit

If proof were the standard of truth, fallacies would constitute the ultimate reality.

~ Raheel Farooq

Actually, the “leap of faith”—to give it the memorable name that Soren Kierkegaard bestowed upon it—is an imposture. As he himself pointed out, it is not a “leap” that can be made once and for all. It is a leap that has to go on and on being performed, in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary. This effort is actually too much for the human mind, and leads to delusions and manias. Religion understands perfectly well that the “leap” is subject to sharply diminishing returns, which is why it often doesn’t in fact rely on “faith” at all but instead corrupts faith and insults reason by offering evidence and pointing to confected “proofs.” This evidence and these proofs include arguments from design, revelations, punishments, and miracles. Now that religion’s monopoly has been broken, it is within the compass of any human being to see these evidences and proofs as the feeble-minded inventions that they are.

~ Christopher Hitchens

Methodological naturalism is a “ground rule” of science today which requires scientists to seek explanations in the world around us based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify

~ Robert T. Pennock

I say, sir, that you can never make an intelligent judgment without evidence.

~ Malcolm X

It is a foolish judge who, before the evidence is presented, makes a judgement.

~ Peter Tremayne

It's very hard to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And no matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the truth.

~ Reginald Rose

Another very good test some readers may want to look up, which we do not have space to describe here, is the Casimir effect, where forces between metal plates in empty space are modified by the presence of virtual particles.Thus virtual particles are indeed real and have observable effects that physicists have devised ways of measuring. Their properties and consequences are well established and well understood consequences of quantum mechanics.

~ Gordon L. Kane

Nature is not embarrassed by difficulties of analysis. She avoids complication only in means. Nature seems to be proposed to do much with little: it is a principle that the development of physics constantly supports by new evidence.

~ Jean Fresnel

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Here are the shadows left behind by a thousand moments, a thousand moods, of needs traced here on the wall by men who are gone. Here is the record of their being here.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

In 2011 in Swansea, Wales, Colin Batley was found guilty of 35 charges relating to his role as the leader of a 'satanic cult' that sexually abused children and women, manufactured child abuse images and forced children and women into prostitution (de Bruxelles 2011).His partner and two other women were also convicted on related charges, with one man convicted of paying to abuse a victim of the group. The groups' ritualistic activities were based on the doctrine of Aleister Crowley, an occult figure whose writing includes references to ritual sex with children. Crowley's literature has been widely linked to the practice of ritualistic abuse by survivors and their advocates, who in turn have been accused by occult groups of religious persecution. During Batley's trial, the prosecution claimed that Crowley's writings formed the basis of Batley's organisation and he read from a copy of it during sexually abusive incidents. It seems that alternative as well as mainstream religious traditions can be misused by sexually abusive groups. p38

~ Michael Salter

Let's think like a cop or to be a killer. If I want to be killer I will left some kind a evidence which make me different from the others... so was it this there?? Why you close it?? Was it open?? Did you, you open it???....

~ Deyth Banger

We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your mouldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a this year's fact. We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years.

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

That's what I want, a mental evidence I can feel. I don't want physical evidence, proof you have to go out and drag in. I want evidence that you can carry in your mind and always touch and smell and feel. But there's no way to do that. In order to believe in a thing you've got to carry it with you. You can't carry the Earth, or a man, in your pocket. I want a way to do that, carry things with me always, so I can believe in them. How clumsy to have to go to all the trouble of going out and bringing in something terribly physical to prove something. I hate physical things because they can be left behind and become impossible to believe in them.

~ Ray Bradbury

Evidence will terminate any short or long era of an argument.

~ Bamigboye Olurotimi

Juries are not computers. They are composed of human beings who evaluate evidence differently.

~ Alan Dershowitz

There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.

~ Josh Billings

There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.

~ Albert Ellis

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

~ Samuel Johnson

No evidence compels the conclusion that the minimum required intake of any vitamin comes close to the optimum intake that sustains good health.

~ Linus Pauling

Growth is the only evidence of life.

~ John Henry Newman

Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.

~ Brendan Gill