Proof Quotes - Page 10

• When Pococke inquired of Grotius, where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet's (Muhammad's) ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there was no proof!

  Thomas Carlyle

  Islamic, Angel, Stories

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• Proofs are the last thing looked for by a truly religious mind which feels the imaginary fitness of its faith.

  George Santayana

  Faith, Religious, Science

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• I'm tired of hearing about innocent victims. It's fiction, If you live on this planet you're guilty, period, f*** you, next case, end of report. Your birth certificate is proof of guilt.

  George Carlin

  Humorous, Tired, Guilt

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• If the so-called 'Christianity' now being practiced in America displays the best that world Christianity has left to offer - no one in his right mind should need any much greater proof that very close at hand is the end of Christianity.

  Malcolm X

  Hands, America, Mind

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• Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Christian, Religious, Jesus

  "Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson". Book by Thomas Jefferson, 1821.

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• I have never seen what to me seemed an atom of proof that there is a future life. And yet-I am inclined to expect one.

  Mark Twain

  Religious, Atoms, Positive Atheism

  Mark Twain (2017). “MARK TWAIN - The Man Behind the Humor: Complete Autobiographical Books & Biographies: The Complete Travel Books, Essays, Autobiographical Writings, Speeches & Letters, With Author’s Biography; The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi, What Is Man, Christian Science…”, p.6371, e-artnow

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• I would not read the proof of one of my books for any fair & reasonable sum whatever, if I could get out of it. The proof-reading on the P & Pauper cost me the last rags of my religion.

  Mark Twain

  Religious, Book, Reading

  Mark Twain, William Dean Howells (1967). “Selected Mark Twain-Howells letters, 1872-1910”

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• Accordingly, France Had Voltaire, and his school of negative thinkers, and England (or rather Scotland) had the profoundest negative thinker on record, David Hume: a man, the peculiarities of whose mind qualified him to detect failure of proof, and want of logical consistency, at a depth which French skeptics, with their comparatively feeble powers of analysis and abstractions stop far short of, and which German subtlety alone could thoroughly appreciate, or hope to rival.

  John Stuart Mill

  Religious, School, Men

  John Stuart Mill (2008). “Utilitarianism and On Liberty: Including 'Essay on Bentham' and Selections from the Writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin”, p.55, John Wiley & Sons

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• He's a blockhead who wants a proof of what he cannot perceive. And he's a fool a fool who tries to make such a blockhead believe.

  Prince William

  Believe, Stupidity, Trying

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• I desire no other proof of Christianity than the Lord's Prayer.

  Madame de Stael

  Prayer, Desire, Christianity

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• Government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man, instead of which it has been monopolized from age to age, by the most ignorant and vicious of the human race. Need we any other proof of their wretched management, than the excess of debts and taxes with which every nation groans, and the quarrels into which they have precipitated the world?"

  Thomas Paine

  Men, Race, Ignorant

  Thomas Paine (1995). “Thomas Paine: Collected Writings: Common Sense / The American Crisis / Rights of: (Library of America #76)”, p.595, Library of America

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• With respect to the words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.

  James Madison

  Character, Government, Liberty

  James Madison's letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831.

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• Simplification of modes of proof is not merely an indication of advance in our knowledge of a subject, but is also the surest guarantee of readiness for farther progress.

  Lord Kelvin

  Knowledge, Science, Progress

  Lord Kelvin, LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S. and Peter Guthrie Tait, M.A. (1912). “Elements of Natural Philosophy”

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• The most convincing proof of the conversion of heat into living force [vis viva] has been derived from my experiments with the electro-magnetic engine, a machine composed of magnets and bars of iron set in motion by an electrical battery. I have proved by actual experiment that, in exact proportion to the force with which this machine works, heat is abstracted from the electrical battery. You see, therefore, that living force may be converted into heat, and that heat may be converted into living force, or its equivalent attraction through space.

  James Prescott Joule

  Life, Science, Iron

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• In point of fact, no conclusive disproof of a theory can ever be produced; for it is always possible to say that the experimental results are not reliable or that the discrepancies which are asserted to exist between the experimental results and the theory are only apparent and that they will disappear with the advance of our understanding. If you insist on strict proof (or strict disproof) in the empirical sciences, you will never benefit from experience, and never learn from it how wrong you are.

  Karl Popper

  Science, Understanding, Benefits

  "The Logic of Scientific Discovery".

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• It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Science, Progress, Goes On

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• If the proof starts from axioms, distinguishes several cases, and takes thirteen lines in the text book ... it may give the youngsters the impression that mathematics consists in proving the most obvious things in the least obvious way.

  George Polya

  Book, Obvious Things, Giving

  George Pólya (1968). “Mathematical discovery: on understanding, learning, and teaching problem solving”

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• The proof given by Wright, that non-adaptive differentiation will occur in small populations owing to "drift," or the chance fixation of some new mutation or recombination, is one of the most important results of mathematical analysis applied to the facts of neo-mendelism. It gives accident as well as adaptation a place in evolution, and at one stroke explains many facts which puzzled earlier selectionists, notably the much greater degree of divergence shown by island than mainland forms, by forms in isolated lakes than in continuous river-systems.

  Julian Huxley

  Science, Rivers, Lakes

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• A short letter to a distant friend is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation - a proof of unwillingness to do much, even where there is a necessity of doing something.

  Samuel Johnson

  Letters, Bows, Opinion

  Samuel Johnson (2014). “The Letters of Samuel Johnson, Volume I: 1731-1772”, p.196, Princeton University Press

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• I definitely know that-that love is the most powerful thing of all and I remember thinking that-God, I'm about to make myself cry but, I remember thinking that when 9/11 happened because those last phone calls were about-the last thing knowingly, that I'm going to say on this earth is 'I love you.' What's more powerful than that? What's more proof than that? Beyond fear, beyond death.

  J. K. Rowling

  Wise, Witty, Powerful

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• A proof that experience is of no use, is that the end of one love does not prevent us from beginning another.

  Paul Bourget

  Love, Experience, Doe

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• Your late purchase of an estate in the colony of Cayenne, with a view to emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous and noble proof of your humanity. Would to God a like spirit would diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people of this country; but I despair of seeing it.

  George Washington

  Country, Views, People

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1835). “Writings: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts”, p.163

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• If God allows proof that he exists he robs people of faith and without faith what is God? Nothing.

  Douglas Adams

  People, Religion, Atheism

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• Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution - paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process, constrained by history, follows perforce.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Religion, Atheism, Path

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• The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof.

  Ashley Montagu

  Believe, Science, Religion

  "Science and Creationism". Book by Ashley Montagu (Introduction, p. 9), 1984.

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