Quotes About Evidence

Yeah. That's the problem with trials. Somehow they have it in their heads, the judge and jury, that they'll decide what's the truth. But the truth already happened. They can't decide what happened. They can only be right or wrong about it. Seems like too many times they're wrong.

One time a Fuckwit brought a snowball into work to prove that the planet getting warmer was just a story to scare little ones and I don't know for sure but I like to think he (or at least all his descendants) got eaten by sharks.

To recite my poems to an audience is to be slapped awake by my limitations. I confront the infinite chasm between the audience's conception of Poet and the underwhelming evidence of me as that poet. I just don't look the part.

They were, all of them, lost to a narrative untethered to anything he recognized as true. Their mad conception of Mr. Lincoln as some kind of cloven-hoofed devil's scion, their complete disregard—denial—of the humanity of the enslaved, their fabulous notions of what evils the Federal government intended for them should their cause fail—all of it was ingrained so deep, beyond the reach of reasonable dialogue or evidence.

There is strong evidence that intuitions are based on simple, smart rules that take into account only some of the available information.

If a man punches you in the eye, you are not expected to have pleaded with him not to for the crime to be accepted as assault. If you are sitting at your cash register and someone demands the cash in it, you will not be accused of consent if you simply hand it over. Only in the prosecution of rape is evidence of resistance an issue.

although there may occur a few stages in his argument which are so trite that he can go through them by rote, much of his argument is likely never to have been constructed before. He has to meet new objections, interpret new evidence and make connections between elements in the situation which had not previously been co-ordinated. In short he has to innovate, and where he innovates he is not operating from habit.

I have spent a great deal of time seeking documentary evidence which would support or contradict the Stangls' story of how they, and others like them, escaped from Europe; and the real facts, it turns out, are neither dramatic nor unequivocal; they are complex, ambiguous and merely prove again that in the final analysis, history is not made by organizations, but by individual men, with individual failings, and individual responsibilities

Every ounce of my cynicism is supported by historical precedent.

There's a difference between suspecting a thing and finally knowing it for certain.

Americans are still a fair and just people. They know the difference between racism and race-baiting, between violence and accusations of violence, between hatred and patriotism. Let them weigh the evidence for as long as they need, because when the verdict comes down, we will once again be on the right side.

the Justice Department failed to "cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA's bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack.

The usefulness of the bulk collection program has been greatly exaggerated. We have yet to see any proof that it provides real, unique value in protecting national security. In spite of our repeated requests, the N.S.A. has not provided evidence of any instance when the agency used this program to review phone records that could not have been obtained using a regular court order or emergency authorization.

The evidence shows that assurances that surveillance is only targeted at those who "have done something wrong" should provide little comfort, since a state will reflexively view any challenge to its power as wrongdoing.

Expecting the US government to operate a massive surveillance machine in complete secrecy without falling prey to its temptations runs counter to every historical example and all available evidence about human nature.

Even the written evidence offered by the executioners tells us that. And it ended with Anastasia not being buried with the rest of her family." Yakov paused. "The DNA experts can speculate all they want, but they still can't say with absolute certainty that any of the bones later found belonged to her. I doubt they ever will." I felt dazed. "How can I know that your version of events is true?

But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'.

Truth can be forgotten, misplaced, or lost, but never annihilated. The human hand might erase the words, mutilate the manuscript, or chisel off a name, but that only alters memory. Such vandalism tampers with the evidence without altering the facts. Cutting part of a document still leaves an outline of what was removed, a silhouette of the missing piece.

By comparison, at the same time that the Mongols were moving to limit the use of torture, both church and state in Europe passed laws to expand its usage to an ever greater variety of crimes for which there need be no evidence.

Nor was Israel's historic claim to the land impressive; to Cullinane it was irrelevant. Once a man started opening the historical-rights barrel of eels, no one could predict where the slippery evidence might run.

The curious thing about this little forerunner of greatness is that although we are sure that he existed and are intellectually convinced that he had to have certain characteristics, no man has ever seen a shred of physical evidence that he really did exist.

he could look at the evidence planted in the universe and from it derive a new concept, and a greater thing than this no mind can accomplish

but on this night he proved that he could do something that none of his companions could: he could look at the evidence planted in the universe and from it derive a new concept, and a greater thing than this no mind can accomplish.