Circumstantial Evidence Quotes

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

  Henry David Thoreau

  Strong, Animal, Humanity

  Journal, 11 Nov. 1850

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• Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Views, Different, May

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892). “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”, p.79

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• Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Trout, Example, Milk

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2007). “The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased Edition) (Vol. 1) (The Annotated Books)”, p.305, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Circumstantial evidence is evidence.

  Bernard Goldberg

  Evidence

  "Casey Anthony, the Media and the 'United States of Entertainment'". "The O'Reilly Factor", www.foxnews.com. July 5, 2011.

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• Witness testimony is always flawed. It's better than circumstantial evidence, sure, but people aren't camcorders; they don't record every action and reaction, and the very act of remembering involves chosing words, actions and images. In other words, any witness who was supposed to be giving a court facts is really just giving them a version of fiction.

  Jodi Picoult

  People, Giving, Fiction

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• We are like a judge confronted by a defendant who declines to answer, and we must determine the truth from the circumstantial evidence.

  Alfred Wegener

  Truth, Judging, Judgement

  Alfred Wegener (1966). “The Origin of Continents and Oceans”, p.8, Courier Corporation

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• Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution. Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you have witnesses, you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say that she did it with her teeth.

  Mark Twain

  Knives, Perfect, Teeth

  Pudd'nhead Wilson ch. 20, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" (1894)

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• Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world. If I say that there cannot be more than one consciousness in the same mind, this seems a blunt tautology - we are quite unable to imagine the contrary...

  Erwin Schrodinger

  Mind, World, Consciousness

  "Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists" edited by Ken Wilber, 1984.

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• There exists a mountain of circumstantial evidence that consciousness survives bodily death. This is the kind of evidence that would stand up in a court of law. Some people believe that science needs better tools to quantify what consciousness is. Perhaps when we discover what consciousness is we will be on the road to providing absolute scientific evidence that there is life after death.

  Jean Ritchie

  Believe, Law, People

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• Not to believe in love is a great sign of dullness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection rests on circumstantial evidence.

  George Santayana

  Real, Believe, Sadness

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• David Irving has consistenly applied an evidential double standard, demanding absolute documentary proof to convict the Germans (as when he sought to show that Hitler was not responsible for the Holocaust), while relying on circumstantial evidence to condemn the British (as in his account of the Allied bombing of Dresden).

  David Cannadine

  Holocaust, Double Standard, Documentaries

  David Cannadine (1998). “History in Our Time”, p.224, Yale University Press

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