Silent Evidence Quotes

Silent evidence pervades everything connected to the notion of history. By history, I don't mean just those learned-but-dull books in the history section (with Renaissance paintings on their cover to attract buyers). History, I will repeat, is any succession of events seen with the effect of posteriority.
This bias extends to the ascription of factors in the success of ideas and religions, to the illusion of skill in many professions, to success in artistic occupations, to the nature versus nurture debate, to mistakes in using evidence in the court of law, to illusions about the "logic" of history
and of course, most severely, in our perception of the nature of extreme events. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Despite the earnest belief of most of his fans, Einstein did not win his Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, special or general. He won for explaining a strange effect in quantum mechanics, the photoelectric effect. His solution provided the first real evidence that quantum mechanics wasn't a crude stopgap for justifying anomalous experiments, but actually corresponds to reality. And the fact that Einstein came up with it is ironic for two reasons. One, as he got older and crustier, Einstein came to distrust quantum mechanics. Its statistical and deeply probabilistic nature sounded too much like gambling to him, and it prompted him to object that "God does not play dice with the universe." He was wrong, and it's too bad that most people have never heard the rejoinder by Niels Bohr: "Einstein! Stop telling God what to do. ~ Sam Kean

A dozen candles burned themselves to death on the shelf before me. Each of my breaths made them tremble. To them, I was a behemoth, to frighten and destroy. And yet, if I strayed too close, they could destroy me. My invisible breath, the pulses of life that flowed in and out, could end them freely, while my fingers could not do the same without being repaid in pain.'"
"'I understood in a moment of stillness,'" Litima read. "'Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires, each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble cities and dash kings to their knees. In later years, my mind would return to that calm, silent evening, when I had stared at rows of living lights. And I would understand. To be given loyalty is to be infused like a gemstone, to be granted the frightful license to destroy not only one's self, but all within one's care. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one - million - year - old light. A vast pattern - of which I am a part ... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent? ~ Richard Feynman

The enemy is typically depicted as a dangerous octopus, a vicious dragon, a multiheaded hydra, a giant venomous tarantula, or an engulfing Leviathan. Other frequently used symbols include vicious predatory felines or birds, monstrous sharks, and ominous snakes, particularly vipers and boa constrictors. Scenes depicting strangulation or crushing, ominous whirlpools, and treacherous quicksands also abound in pictures from the time of wars, revolutions, and political crises. The juxtaposition of paintings from non-ordinary states of consciousness that depict perinatal experiences with the historical pictorial documentation collected by Lloyd de Mause and Sam Keen offer strong evidence for the perinatal roots of human violence. ~ Stanislav Grof

This has been going on through the ages. They criticize the silent ones. They criticize the talkative ones. They criticize the moderate ones. There is no one in the world that escapes criticism. There never was and never will be, nor is there now, the wholly criticized or the wholly approved. Shakyamuni Buddha said that more than twenty-five hundred years ago, but it seems that some things never change. ~ Pema Chodron

Silent as a flower, her face fell in dismay, aware that the ghost of lust ate and left, sensing that there was a different scent of perfume consuming the room, and that she had numbered and counted the he loves me, he loves me not of each petal, where the lifeless dust had settle. ~ Anthony Liccione

His voice a rhythm like rain, words rolling over themselves...

"You are distinguished from the leaves
by the shape of your eyes.
They are whiter in color and rounder.
Except on nights like this
when the leaves are luminous...."

"Still, you are distinguished from the night–
your voice silent as candles melted
in their own pools,
used up with expression and light.... ~ Debi Cimo

Love, and do what you will. If you are silent, be silent for love; or if you cry out, cry out for love. If you chastise, chastise for love; if you spare, spare for love. ~ Saint Augustine

This habit starts awfully early. Social psychologist Marilynn Brewer, who has been studying the nature of stereotypes for many years, once reported that her daughter returned from kindergarten complaining that "boys are crybabies."25 The child's evidence was that she had seen two boys crying on their first day away from home. Brewer, ever the scientist, asked whether there hadn't also been little girls who cried. "Oh yes," said her daughter. "But only some girls cry. I didn't cry." Brewer's little girl was already dividing the world, as everyone does, into us and them. Us is the most fundamental social category in the brain's organizing system, and it's hardwired. ~ Carol Tavris

Our Jewishness is not a creed, it is ourself, our totality. Indeed, it may be fairly said that the surest evidence of your lack of seriousness in religion is the fact that your religions are not national, that you are not compromised and dedicated, en masse, to the faith. ~ Maurice Samuel

A wise woman knows when to stay silent. However, a wiser woman of faith knows that sometimes words can win the battle, when all odds stand against her. ~ Shannon L. Alder

The summer night was starless and stirless, with distant spasms of silent lightning. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Your brain secretly wants that song, because it's so familiar to everything else you've already heard and liked. It just sounds right." There is evidence that a preference for things that sound "familiar" is a product of our neurology. ~ Charles Duhigg

Giants isn't eating each other either, the BFG said. Nor is giants killing each other. Giants is not very lovely, but they is not killing each other. Nor is crockadowndillies killing other crockadowndillies. Nor is pussy-cats killing pussy-cats.

'They kill mice,' Sophie said.

'Ah, but they is not killing their own kind,' the BFG said. 'Human beans is the only animals that is killing their own kind.'

'Don't poisonous snakes kill each other?' Sophie asked. She was searching desperately for another creature that behaved as badly as the human.

'Even poisnowse snakes is never killing each other,' the BFG said. 'Nor is the most fearsome creatures like tigers and rhinostossterisses. None of them is ever killing their own kind. Has you ever thought about that?'

Sophie kept silent.

'I is not understanding human beans at all,' the BFG said.' You is a human bean and you is saying it is grizzling and horrigust for giants to be eating human beans. Right or left?'

'Right,' Sophie said.

'But human beans is squishing each other all the time,' the BFG said. 'They is shootling guns and going up in
aerioplanes to drop their bombs on each other's heads every week. Human beans is always killing other human beans.'

He was right. Of course he was right and Sophie knew it. She was beginning to wonder whether humans were actually any better than giants. 'Even so,' she said, defending her own race, ~ Roald Dahl

mind began growing distant. Her eyes stayed shut without her needing to clench them. Slowly, she started to doze. But then her cell began to buzz. She'd put it on silent and left it on her desk, but ~ Lucy Lambert

As they left, the girls were choking with laughter, but once they reached Mersault's house and the cool shade of the rooms, which emphasized the dazzling whiteness of the sun-drenched garden walls, they discovered a silent harmony that Catherine expressed by the desire to take a sunbath on the terrace. ~ Albert Camus

Good works are indispensable to salvation - not as its ground or means, however, but as its consequence and evidence. ~ John Stott

Even when the lights go out, even when someone says to me: "It's over---," even when from the stage a gray gust of emptiness drifts toward me,
even when not one silent ancestor sits beside me anymore---not a woman, not even the boy with the brown squint-eye:
I'll sit here anyway. One can always watch. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

It was clearly the Native American curse on the white man in action. After taking their land and converting everything that was holy and good into money, the white man became aged and foolish and then gambled all that money away at Native American casinos. The power of this magic was indisputable and in evidence all around me. Senior citizens chain smoked and dumped money into the machines, staring with eyes that only reacted to the prospect of making a buck from risk and self-destruction. Especially if this were enhanced by the notion of a fate that had their interests in mind in a way loosely connected to their Christian God who usually took their side in racial relations, if history were to be a judge. ~ Carl-John X. Veraja

The soul lives there in the silent breath. ~ Rumi

Every man and woman present thought how the neatly drawn lines and words upon the maps were in truth ice-covered pools and rivers, silent woods, frozen ditches and high, bare hills and every one of them thought how many sheep and cattle and wild creatures died in this season. ~ Susanna Clarke

He was withdrawing. I think it was getting harder for him to accept his fate.
Like a bird in a cage, he grew silent. ~ Alice Hoffman

Perhaps, too, in the "shift-the-blame" society we live in, we have forgotten how to weep over our sins. David, the psalm writer, said, "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long" (Psalm 32:3). I wonder if so many of us rush off to self-help groups because we have lost the ability to be real in our churches. ~ Sheila Walsh

I encourage film students who are interested in cinematography to study sculpture, paintings, music, writing and other arts. Filmmaking consists of all the arts combined. Students are always asking me for advice, and I tell them that they have to be enthusiastic, because it's hard work. The only way to enjoy it is to be totally immersed. If you don't get involved on that level, it could be a very miserable job. I only have one regret about my career: I'm sorry that we are not making silent movies any more. That is the purest art form I can imagine. ~ Vilmos Zsigmond

We bumped into other silent lines of kids going in the same direction. We looked like we were much younger and our lines were headed to the cafeteria or recess or the carpool line. Or it could've been a fire drill. Except for the stone-faced police officers weaving between us with rifles. ~ Laura Anderson Kurk

Mothers, I believe, intoxicate us. We idolize them and take them for granted. We hate them and blame them and exalt them more thoroughly than anyone else in our lives. We sift through the evidence of their love, reassure ourselves of their affection and its biological genesis. We can steal and lie and leave and they will love us. ~ Megan Mayhew Bergman

History is what the evidence compels us to believe. ~ Michael Joseph Oakeshott

even though the orthodox claimed that this kind of manipulation of texts was a heretical activity, in the manuscripts of the New Testament that survive today almost all the evidence points in the other direction, showing that it was precisely orthodox scribes who modified their texts in order to make them conform more closely with orthodox theological interests. ~ Bart D. Ehrman

Then I felt that every inflection of my voice, every word in my mouth, was a lie, a play whose sole purpose was to cover emptiness and boredom. There was only one way I could avoid a state of despair and a breakdown. To be silent. And to reach behind the silence for clarity or at least try to collect the resources that might still be available to me. ~ Ingmar Bergman

Asking doesn't mean you lack wisdom - it's evidence of wisdom. ~ Andy Stanley

I feel like he's a guest at the hotel I'm running. I'm constantly taking a silent feminist stand to see if he'll step up and lend a hand. The scorekeeping never ends. ~ Jancee Dunn

Gjerji raises his hand. In English he says, "I like to tell in the words of a great American philosopher what freedom is."
"Say it in your language to your peers," I urge.
Gyerji makes his statement. The class grows silent and thoughtful; there is much nodding. Twain perhaps? Emerson? Diana sidles up and whispers in my ear. "He says to them that freedom is a word when nothing is anymore able to be losed."
Janis Joplin, de-syntaxed. ~ Laura Kelly

Horror cannot be spoken because it is alive; because it is silent and is going forward; it drips into the day and it drips into sleep. Sorrow-recalling pain. ~ Yorgos Seferis

In the history of mankind there are recorded two great Inversions. The first, set forth by the Nazarene to the effect that love is a greater power and more real than vengeance. The second proclaimed the earth to be a sphere revolving in its course around the sun. These affirmations were made in the face of all evidence sacred to the contrary. ~ Louis Sullivan

There's a great deal of scientific evidence that social connectedness is a very strong protector of emotional well-being, and I think there's no question that social isolation has greatly increased in our culture in, say, the past 50 years, past 100 years. ~ Andrew Weil

There is a kind of expressed love which is easy to subvert. When a figure is loved for their deeds, their conquests, their heroism, their goodness, their love of the people, these are easy enough to destroy ... But there is a kind of love which is felt for apparently no reason ... A love, inspired, it seems, by the gods, which it is impossible to fight, distort, destroy, or weaken. In fact, the attempts to destroy such loves only strengthen them. And to do nothing allows them to continue to grow at their natural pace, inexoribly, till this love becomes a wide and silent adoration. ~ Ben Okri

Not everyone has been a bully or the victim of bullies, but everyone has seen bullying, and seeing it, has responded to it by joining in or objecting, by laughing or keeping silent, by feeling disgusted or feeling interested. ~ Octavia E. Butler

If that's how it all started, then we might as well face the fact that what's left out there is a great deal of shrapnel and a whole bunch of cinders (one of which is, fortunately, still hot enough and close enough to be good for tanning). Trying to find some sense and order in this mess may be as futile as trying to ... reconstruct the economy of Iowa from a bowl of popcorn. [On searching for evidence of the Big Bang.] ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Liberal child welfare experts decided that child abuse was not evidence of a moral or character flaw in the abusing parent. Instead, like poverty, crime, and homelessness, child abuse came to be viewed as evidence of a societal failure. ~ Mona Charen

A large and comfortable double-bedded room had been placed at our disposal, and I was quickly between the sheets, for I was weary after my night of adventure. Sherlock Holmes was a man, however, who when he had an unsolved problem upon his mind would go for days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it over, rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view, until he had either fathomed it, or convinced himself that his data were insufficient. It was soon evident to me that he was now preparing for an all-night sitting. He took off his coat and waistcoat, put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then wandered about the room collecting pillows from his bed, and cusions from the sofa and armchairs. With these he constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old brier pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features. So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe was still between his lips, the smoke still curled upwards, and the room was full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap of shag which I had seen upon the previ ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The different ness of races, moreover, is no evidence of superiority or of inferiority. This merely indicates that each race has certain gifts which the others do not possess. ~ Carter G. Woodson

There is voluminous evidence that exclusive reliance on heuristic processing tendencies of Type I sometimes results in suboptimal responding (Baron, 2008; Evans, 2007a; Gilovich, Griffin, & Kahneman, 2002; Johnson-Laird, 2006; Kahneman & Tversky, 1973, 1996, 2000; Koehler & Harvey, 2004; Nickerson, 2004, 2008; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974, 1983, 1986) and that such thinking errors are not limited to the laboratory (Ariely, 2008; Åstebro, Jeffrey, & Adomdza, 2007; Baron, 1998; Baron, Bazerman, & Shonk, 2006; Belsky & Gilovich, 1999; Berner & Graber, 2008; Camerer, 2000; Chapman & Elstein, 2000; Croskerry, 2009a, 2009b; Dawes, 2001; Hilton, 2003; Kahneman & Tversky, 2000; Lichtenstein & Slovic, 2006; Lilienfeld, Ammirati, & Landfield, 2009; Myers, 2002; Prentice, 2003; Reyna et al., 2009; Stewart, 2009; Sunstein, 2002, 2005; Taleb, 2001, 2007; Tavris & Aronson, 2007; Tetlock, 2005; Thaler & Sunstein, 2008; Ubel, 2000). ~ Keith E. Stanovich

We were not then powerful enough to erase all evidence of the Precursors, to destroy their star roads and citadels and other artifacts. And so we left at least one Precursor behind, to live out dreams of vengeance and hatred, to lay down plans in cold and darkness at the heart of a lost asteroid - over millions of years. ~ Greg Bear

There is in all of us a spirit of scepticism which remains with us all our lives. Our most treasured beliefs dwell in its shadow. It exists because we are all afraid of being duped. And with some of us, who have knelt before many idols only to discover eventually that they are things of stone made by men, this spirit of scepticism persists no matter how convincing the evidence may be that our doubts are baseless. For some of us it is not enough to see Lazarus raised from the dead. ~ Claude Houghton

All the evidence over several decades cast a critical light on the high-rise as a viable social structure, but cost-effectiveness in the area of public housing and the profitability in the private sector kept pushing these vertical townships into the sky, against the real needs of their occupants. The psychology of high-rise life had been exposed with damaging results. Living in high-rises required a special type of behavior, one that was acquiescent, restrained, even perhaps slightly mad. A psychotic would have a ball here. ~ J.G. Ballard

Royce saw to his horse's needs; then, finding a suitable place, he unrolled his blanket and lay down.

"I take it we're camping here, then?"

Royce said nothing, still refusing to acknowledge his existence.

"You could have said, 'We're going to bed down here for the rest of the night.' No, wait, you're right, too much. How about 'sleeping here'? Two words. Even you could manage that, right? I mean, I know you can talk. You had plenty to say back in Arcadius's office. Couldn't keep the words from coming out then, but no, utterly impossible to indicate in any way that we'll be stopping here for the night."

Hadrian dismounted and began unloading Dancer. "How long were we on the road?" He paused to look up at the moon. "What? Five, six hours? Not a damn word. Getting chilly out, don't you think, Hadrian? Moon looks like a fingernail, ain't that right, Hadrian? That tree looks like a goddamn bear, don't it, Hadrian? Nothing. By the way, in case you hadn't noticed, I was attacked by a goshawk and a pig-riding dwarf that shot eggs at me with a sling. I was knocked from my horse and wrestled with the dwarf, the hawk, and the pig for what had to be half an hour. The dwarf kept smashing eggs in my face, and that ruddy pig pinned me down, licking them off. I only got away because the dwarf ran out of eggs. Then the hawk turned into a moth that became distracted by the light of the moon."
Royce shifted to his side, hood up.

"Yeah, ~ Michael J. Sullivan

The futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that particular stage to remain silent. Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters - there is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void ... That's why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window. ~ Jean Baudrillard