Non Evidence Quotes

True art must be evidence of happiness, contentment and purity of its authors. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

The fundamental core of contemporary Darwinism, the theory of DNA-based reproduction and evolution, is now beyond dispute among scientists. It demonstrates its power every day, contributing crucially to the explanation of planet-sized facts of geology and meteorology, through middle-sized facts of ecology and agronomy, down to the latest microscopic facts of genetic engineering. It unifies all of biology and the history of our planet into a single grand story. Like Gulliver tied down in Lilliput, it is unbudgeable, not because of some one or two huge chains of argument that might–hope against hope–have weak links in them, but because it is securely tied by hundreds of thousands of threads of evidence anchoring it to virtually every other field of knowledge. New discoveries may conceivably lead to dramatic, even 'revolutionary' shifts in the Darwinian theory, but the hope that it will be 'refuted' by some shattering breakthrough is about as reasonable as the hope that we will return to a geocentric vision and discard Copernicus. ~ Daniel C. Dennett

The fact that we had independently decided to sweep our apartments on that Sunday afternoon after spending the weekend together, I took as a strong piece of evidence that we were right for each other. And from then on when I read things Samuel Johnson said about the deadliness of leisure and the uplifting effects of industry, I always nodded and thought of brooms. ~ Nicholson Baker

His departure was a sad disappointment to those hands who had been preparing their testimony for the trial. Some of them were old shipmates of Jack's, and they were perfectly ready to swear through a nine-inch plank so long as their evidence led in the right direction: the court would have heard a lively description of the Honourable Sod's furious assault upon the Captain with a brace of pistols, a boarding-axe, a naked sword and a topmast fid, together with all the warm or pathetic expressions used on either side, such as Somers' 'Rot your vitals, you infernal bugger,' and Jack's 'Pray, Mr Somers, consider what you are about. ~ Patrick O'Brian

I'm not saying we shouldn't grieve. Just, why don't we put it in God's hands? she said. Why haven't we learned this, after all the evidence of all the dead? We're supposed to believe in God but then why don't we obey the laws of God's universe, which teach us how small we are and where we're all going to end up? ~ Don DeLillo

Having needs is not evidence of weakness – it is human. ~ Danielle Bernock

Anthropologists have found evidence of romantic love in 170 societies. They've never found a society that did not have it. ~ Helen Fisher

The grand jury's job is not to weigh the evidence from both sides; it is only to decide whether there is enough evidence on one side to bring a person to trial. ~ Donella Meadows

If our ideas are not evolving with verifiable evidence, they are not reliable ideas. ~ Carmine Savastano

Time and experience have forcefully taught that the power to inspect dwelling places, either as a matter of systematic area-by-area search or, as here, to treat a specific problem, is of indispensable importance in the maintenance of community health; a power that would be greatly hobbled by the blanket requirement of the safeguards necessary for a search of evidence of criminal acts. ~ Felix Frankfurter

Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private 'revelation'. ~ Richard Dawkins

I do not like January very much. It is too stationary. Not enough happens. I like the evidences of life, and in January there are too few of them. ~ Vita Sackville-West

The idea that Americans favor politicians who either remind them of themselves or can imagine what their selves are like because they too have struggled and sung the blues, is, like very best theories of human behavior, immune to falsification by mere evidence. ~ Walter Kirn

We stand for organized terror - this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Soviet Government and of the new order of life. We judge quickly. In most cases only a day passes between the apprehension of the criminal and his sentence. When confronted with evidence criminals in almost every case confess; and what argument can have greater weight than a criminal's own confession. ~ Felix Dzerzhinsky

Poetry is evidence that the heart thinks and the mind feels. ~ Nayyirah Waheed

Quite often Wrong Planet people have a chequered past with periods of, how shall we say, fluctuating fortunes. Feast or famine, that's always been our lifestyle, with maybe spells of what some people would term 'reprehensible conduct.' A number of Carefree Scamps have served time in prison. And if you're reading this now and thinking, "Well, I must admit I've been a bit of a scoundrel at times, but I like to think my heart's in the right place now," then that's further evidence that you 'get' it. ~ Karl Wiggins

The evidence that climate change is happening is completely unequivocal ... The later governments leave tackling climate change, the harder it will be to combat ... The variation we are seeing in temperature or rainfall is double the rate of the average. That suggests that we are going to have more droughts, we are going to have more floods, we are going to have more sea surges and we are going to have more storms. These are the sort of changes that are going to affect us in quite a short timescale ~ John Beddington

That queen, of error, whom we call fancy and opinion, is the more deceitful because she does not always deceive. She would be the infallible rule of truth if she were the infallible rule of falsehood; but being only most frequently in error, she gives no evidence of her real quality, for she marks with the same character both that which is true and that which is false. ~ Blaise Pascal

I believed we could know what was happening to us. We were not excluded from our own lives. That is not my head on someone else's body in the photograph that's introduced as evidence. I didn't believe that nations play-act on a grand scale. I lived in the real. ~ Don DeLillo

The mishandling of the would-be airplane bomber Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab's visa is only the latest piece of evidence that the granting of visas should be taken away from the State Department. For the granting of visas - especially today, when terrorism is such a complex threat - is far closer to being a law-enforcement function. ~ Elliott Abrams

This is how proofiness works. The assertion is more important than the evidence itself. ~ David Corn

Certainly every historian brings certain predilections to the study of history. But every historian also has the ethical obligation to suspend judgment until finding the evidence overwhelmingly persuasive, the method beyond reproach, the results replicable, and the analyses sound. ~ George M. Dennison

Oftentimes, the only evidence left behind at the scene of a shooting are bullet shell casings. ~ Grace Meng

The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. ~ G.K. Chesterton

George Piro, had gathered evidence that al-Qaeda had a network of adherents at American flight schools. Williams urged a nationwide investigation. He was unsurprised when headquarters took no action; thirteen years of experience had taught him that counterintelligence and counterterrorism were "bastard stepchildren" at the FBI. ~ Tim Weiner

We sit at our consoles and play "Gears of War", but we don't see images from war. We don't turn on the news and see the evidence of war, the result of war. Maybe twice a year, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, we'll go out, we'll hang our flags, we'll try to inculcate in our children some sense of national honor for the fallen. But really, we don't see it. We just don't see the pictures. There's no drive-by on the freeway of death up close. So we don't really see bravery. ~ Jamie Lee Curtis

I think this notion that public enterprises do not work and therefore nationalization will be a disaster, I mean, it's not supported by evidence. ~ Ha-Joon Chang

A wealth of research confirms the importance of face-to-face contact. One experiment performed by two researchers at the University of Michigan challenged groups of six students to play a game in which everyone could earn money by cooperating. One set of groups met for ten minutes face-to-face to discuss strategy before playing. Another set of groups had thirty minutes for electronic interaction. The groups that met in person cooperated well and earned more money. The groups that had only connected electronically fell apart, as members put their personal gains ahead of the group's needs. This finding resonates well with many other experiments, which have shown that face-to-face contact leads to more trust, generosity, and cooperation than any other sort of interaction.
The very first experiment in social psychology was conducted by a University of Indiana psychologist who was also an avid bicyclist. He noted that "racing men" believe that "the value of a pace," or competitor, shaves twenty to thirty seconds off the time of a mile. To rigorously test the value of human proximity, he got forty children to compete at spinning fishing reels to pull a cable. In all cases, the kids were supposed to go as fast as they could, but most of them, especially the slower ones, were much quicker when they were paired with another child. Modern statistical evidence finds that young professionals today work longer hours if they live in a metropolitan area with plenty of competitors in th ~ Edward L. Glaeser

There is already a mountain of evidence that Saddam Hussein is gathering weapons for the purpose of using them. And adding additional information is like adding a foot to Mount Everest. ~ Ari Fleischer

Goose bumps are the tangible evidence of vibrational presence. If you have goose bumps, you know that it must be true. Goose bumps are like Truth Detector Machines. ~ Kate McGahan

Of course many southern whites did switch from voting Democrat to voting Republican, helping the GOP become the majority party in the South, as the Democrats once were. But remember that racism declined sharply in the South during the second half of the twentieth century. There is quite literally a mountain of scholarly data that documents this. And this was the very period of GOP ascendancy. So as the South became less racist, it became more Republican. I provide evidence in this book to show that southern whites became Republican not for racist motives but for economic ones. The most racist poor whites never left the Democratic Party; they remained loyal to the party of racism until they died. In this sense, the data show that racism slowed the movement of whites toward the Republicans. ~ Dinesh D'Souza

Being a scientist means that you should be able to put your faith to the test, and be willing to surrender it should evidence so require. But it does not mean we have no beliefs. In fact, the very discipline of science is based on the belief that the world is comprehensible, and even more audaciously, that it is mathematically describable. The thing about scientific beliefs is that they are not arbitrary. They're not just random opinions we plucked out of the sky; we came to them through observation and experience, and so far, these beliefs have always been vindicated. ~ Tasneem Zehra Husain

I didn't think there was anything more or less obscene about any part of the body. Now, I recognize that there are certain postures and angles that make people see red, which are evidence of original sin or something, and I avoid that. ~ Jock Sturges

Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I have no liking for novels or stories - none in the world; and so, whenever I read one - which is not oftener than once in two years, and even in these same cases I seldom read beyond the middle of the book - my distaste for the vehicle always taints my judgment of the literature itself, as a matter of course; and also of course makes my verdict valuless. Are you saying "You have written stories yourself." Quite true: but the fact that an Indian likes to scalp people is no evidence that he likes to be scalped. ~ Mark Twain

I am certainly open to the idea that this might be used to explain other philosophical categories besides knowledge. I have some real sympathy with the work of those moral realists who have tried to give naturalistic accounts of human flourishing, and who offer accounts of right action in such terms. (I suppose this is more evidence that I really do have deep affinities with Aristotle!) ~ Hilary Kornblith

Even short commutes stab at your happiness. According to the research,* commuting is associated with an increased risk of obesity, insomnia, stress, neck and back pain, high blood pressure, and other stress-related ills such as heart attacks and depression, and even divorce. But let's say we ignore the overwhelming evidence that commuting doesn't do a body good. Pretend it isn't bad for the environment either. Let ~ Jason Fried

breezed past me towards the cockpit. "I'll drive." "Why you?" Wait, shut up, Penny. You've got a goose-egg on your forehead and your heart aches. You don't want to drive! Fortunately, Claire had her answer ready. "Artificially enhanced super reflexes, I've been watching Remmy, and I play more flight simulators than you do." Relieved to be relieved of duty, I sank down in a chair and closed my eyes. The ship lurched, pulling me down for a second, but that meant we were airborne. Or spaceborne. I only felt a gentle tug to one side as we accelerated. Claire was getting the hang of the system. I peeked enough to see the wall towards the back of the ship brighten. Evidence for my theory that Remmy used the push of aetheric rotors to disguise the pull of engine thrust. "Any guesses how I find Europa station?" Claire called out. ~ Richard Roberts

I have long been something of a climate-change sceptic, but my views in recent years have shifted. For me, the most convincing evidence that something worrying is going on lies right here in the Arctic. ~ Michael Hanlon

Brilliance doesn't depend only on talk and flair, even though we're sometimes tempted to believe so. Brilliance depends on believing in the hard work you're capable of doing, but it also depends on believing in your potential, believing in your minds, believing in your heart. Brilliance sometimes relies on believing in your talents before you have any evidence that they're there. What a luxury, to take such an enormous leap of faith, without hesitation!
Because even as I've worked hard year after year for more than twenty years now, as I've polished my work and demanded steady improvement from myself and asked myself to do better, I realize that for all of the concrete skills I've gained, nothing takes the place of truly believing that my ideas and words have a right to be taken seriously. And if I believed enough in my talents years ago to own them, who knows what I could've created? ~ Heather Havrilesky

I came at her like a snake.
"I am fully done with other people telling me what to do with my history," I said. "My past made me who I am. There is no way to wipe it clean. I am the evidence. If you look at me and see track marks and too-skinny arms and hands that know how to hold a gun and a brain that is sharper and faster than yours, then that is not my problem. Do you hear me? I have regrets, and I have made mistakes, but I am who I am. I'm done pretending that I've wholly remade myself, that I'm going to ... to hie myself away in some lecture hall for the next four years to make you all comfortable." She was backed up against the door, now, her arms wrapped around herself, and I didn't care. "If you want to stop seeing it, you'll have to stop seeing me, and I am not going to disappear. ~ Brittany Cavallaro

For a brief moment I felt I was the older, the more mature.

"A gift of life," I responded, "if not to say, a gift of God, such as music, should not have the mocking charge of paradox leveled at it for things that are merely evidence of the fullness of its nature. One should love them."

"Do you believe love is the strongest emotion?" he asked.

"Do you know any stronger?"

"Yes, interest."

"By which you probably mean a love that has been deprived of its animal warmth, is that it?"

"Let's agree on that definition!" he said with a laugh.

"Good night!"

We had arrived again at the Leverkühn house, and he opened his front door. ~ Thomas Mann

Many times we take our cue from the people around us. How are they acting? What are they doing? We automatically assume that they must know something we don't and follow them. Unfortunately, most of the time they don't know any better and they also look around for social evidence in us. ~ Dragos Bratasanu

Nayrol is without speech and therefore never lies ... (Nayrol is) one of the nature gods of the Red River people. Objective evidence is the ultimate authority. Recorders may lie, but Nature is incapable of it. ~ Walter M. Miller Jr.

When it comes to believing things without actual evidence, we all incline to what we find most attractive. ~ James Hilton

The scientific method is designed to help investigators overcome the most entrenched human cognitive habit: the confirmation bias, the tendency to notice and remember evidence that confirms our beliefs or decisions, and to ignore, dismiss, or forget evidence that is discrepant. That's why we are all inclined to stick to a hypothesis we believe in. Science is one way of forcing us, kicking and screaming if necessary, to modify our views. ~ Carol Tavris

In the absence of evidence, superstition. It's a Middle Ages thing. That's my theory anyway. ~ Tucker Carlson

If a person claims that he really loves someone, evidence is asked from him. And that evidence is the giving away of possessions, the granting of favors. Just as when Mevlana claimed that he loved me, when I came he granted me thousands of favors and protected me. I regard these all as a grace from God. ~ Shams Tabrizi