Evidence Quotes - Page 34

• Do I believe in ghosts?...I am prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me.

  M. R. James

  Believe, Ghost, Accepting

  M. R. James (1987). “Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories”, p.15, Oxford Paperbacks

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• People can burn archives; people can destroy evidence, but to say that history is perishable, that historical evidence is perishable, is different than saying that history is subjective.

  Errol Morris

  People, Historical, Archives

  Interview with Nick Poppy, www.believermag.com. April 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You don't get to cut that chain of evidence and start over. You're always going to be pursued by your data shadow, which is forming from thousands and thousands of little leaks and tributaries of information.

  Bruce Sterling

  Cutting, Data, Starting Over

  4 Copy quote

• It was while I was studying philosophy that I came to understand. . . that it is no sign of moral or spiritual strength to believe that for which one has no evidence, neither a priori evidence as in math, nor a posteriori evidence as in science. . . . It's a violation almost immoral in its transgressiveness to shirk the responsibilities of rationality.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Spiritual, Philosophy, Believe

  10 Copy quote

• In contrast to creation, Darwinism does not have a single piece of evidence demonstrating the theory of evolution. Its proponents don't have any fossil evidence, of the kind which they should be able to put forward.

  Harun Yahya

  Theory Of Evolution, Doe, Pieces

  Source: www.spiegel.de

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Finding truth involves some kind of activity. As I like to point out, truth isn't handed to you on a platter. It's not something that you get at a cafeteria, where they just put it on your plate. It's a search, a quest, an investigation, a continual process of looking at and looking for evidence, trying to figure out what the evidence means.

  Errol Morris

  Mean, Trying, Quests

  Source: www.believermag.com

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The point is that religion puts a value on irrationality, which makes it the perfect tool for promoting irrational beliefs like misogyny. Other ideologies can be challenged with evidence and reason, but religion is allowed a pass by most people. And that's why it's especially dangerous.

  Amanda Marcotte

  People, Perfect, Tools

  11 Copy quote

• To build and strengthen new connections, the brain needs the challenge of fresh and unusual stimuli. .... There's a lot of evidence to suggest that repetition is bad for brain health, and novelty is good.

  Robert Winston

  Challenges, Brain, Novelty

  7 Copy quote

• [The monks'] credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history; and superstition gradually extinguished the hostile light of philosophy and science.

  Edward Gibbon

  Philosophy, Light, Mind

  Edward Gibbon (2000). “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II: A.D. 395 to A.D. 1185 (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.560, Modern Library

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• He [the Statist] is unmoved by reason, evidence, and history.

  Mark Levin

  Reason

  6 Copy quote

• If you rest on the finished work of Jesus you have already the best evidence of your salvation in the world; you have God's word for it; what more is needed?

  Charles Spurgeon

  Jesus, World, Salvation

  Charles Spurgeon (1998). “Spurgeon on Prayer & Spiritual Warfare (6 In 1 Anthology)”, p.32, Whitaker House

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• As the data from the past decade clarify, there is no evidence that poverty causes crime but a great deal of evidence that crime causes poverty. By aligning themselves against the police, against commonsense tactics like stop and frisk, against metal detectors in public housing, against swift and certain punishment, and for a broad array of legal protections for accused criminals, liberals helped to aggrieve the lives of the poor and society as a whole.

  Mona Charen

  Past, Data, Punishment

  7 Copy quote

• The first ministers were the twelve disciples. There is no evidence that Jesus chose them because they are brighter or nicer than other people. Their sole qualification seems to have been their initial willingness to rise to their feet when Jesus said, "Follow me."

  Frederick Buechner

  Jesus, Feet, People

  Frederick Buechner (2009). “Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC's of Faith”, p.259, Zondervan

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Later, I would realize that the position of most black students in predominantly white colleges was already too tenuous, our identities too scrambled, to admit to ourselves that our black pride remained incomplete. And to admit our doubt and confusion to whites, to open up our psyches to general examination by those who had caused so much of the damage in the first place, seemed ludicrous, itself an expression of self-hatred - for there seemed no reason to expect that whites would look at our private struggles as a mirror into their own souls, rather than yet more evidence of black pathology.

  Barack Obama

  Struggle, Pride, Psych

  4 Copy quote

• In examining the evidence of the Christian religion, it is essential to the discovery of truth that we bring to the investigation a mind freed, as far as possible, from existing prejudice, and open to conviction.

  Simon Greenleaf

  Christian, Discovery, Mind

  Simon Greenleaf (1874). “The Testimony of the Evangelists”, p.1

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm all for empowerment and education, but the empirical evidence is that it doesn't work. That's why I say make it easy.

  Richard Thaler

  Empowerment, Easy, Empirical Evidence

  17 Copy quote

• The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of a sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Spiritual, Moral Fiber, Welfare Programs

  Franklin D. Roosevelt (1995). “The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt”, Gramercy

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• All too often we are more afraid of physical pain than of moral wrong. The cross is the standing evidence of the fact that holiness is a principle for which God would die.

  Billy Graham

  Pain, Principles, Holiness

  Billy Graham (2011). “The Holy Spirit: Activating God's Power in Your Life”, p.172, Thomas Nelson Inc

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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)

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We each create a story - a narritive, a picture, an allegory, a model - for what's going on in the universe. And then we fight - sometimes to the death - to make others believe in that model, or to be able to keep believing in it ourselves. In other words, we try to erase contradictory evidence to that model.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Believe, Fighting, Trying

  31 Copy quote

• You don't believe that the Earth is round only if you're an astronaut. You don't believe Napoleon existed only if you're a historian. You believe these things because they're facts, proved by evidence.

  Richard Dawkins

  Believe, Earth, Facts

  16 Copy quote

• There is no evidence that suggests women are naturally better at caring for children... with the fact of child-bearing out of the centre of attention, there is even more reason for treating girls first as human beings, then as women.

  Margaret Mead

  Girl, Children, Caring

  4 Copy quote

• The reason why life may be judged to be trivial although at certain moments it seems to us so beautiful is that we form our judgment, ordinarily, not on the evidence of life itself but of those quite different images which preserve nothing of life-and therefore we judge it disparagingly.

  Marcel Proust

  Beautiful, Judging, Different

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume VI: Time Regained (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.260, Modern Library

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Once you reject evidence as a source of knowledge, you don't gotta believe nothin' you don't like.

  Tim Minchin

  Believe, Source, Rejects

  "Tim Minchin: Mocking God in the heart of Texas" by Tim Minchin, www.theguardian.com. November 5, 2011.

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• The best definition I can find of faith is the dependence upon the veracity of another. The Bible definition in the 11th chapter of Hebrews is, 'Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' In other words, faith says amen to everything that God says. Faith takes God without any ifs, If God says it, Faith says I believe it; Faith says amen to it.

  Dwight L. Moody

  Believe, Substance, Definitions

  18 Copy quote