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Quotes About Evidence

Only in a spontaneous utterance is there real, uncalculated evidence of enlightenment.)
~ Thomas Hoover
Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.
~ Thomas Huxley
Science ... warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.
~ Thomas Huxley
The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.
~ Thomas Huxley
Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.
~ Thomas Jefferson
there's a common trick nature plays on its would-be investigators: resemblance, the human urge to map the unknown onto the already known, can be a snare. Just because something looks like something else doesn't mean that the backstory for both must be the same. Rocks scattered across the sky may appear to be a rubble field left behind by an explosion…but unless you stop to think how else you might get there, you rely on assumptions not in evidence.
~ Thomas Levenson
Not only do increasing numbers of laypeople lack basic knowledge, they reject fundamental rules of evidence and refuse to learn how to make a logical argument. In doing so, they risk throwing away centuries of accumulated knowledge and undermining the practices and habits that allow us to develop new knowledge. This
~ Thomas M. Nichols
Conspiracy theorists manipulate all tangible evidence to fit their explanation, but worse, they will also point to the absence of evidence as even stronger confirmation. After all, what better sign of a really effective conspiracy is there than a complete lack of any trace that the conspiracy exists? Facts, the absence of facts, contradictory facts: everything is proof. Nothing can ever challenge the underlying belief. These
~ Thomas M. Nichols
These are dangerous times. Never have so many people had so much access to so much knowledge and yet have been so resistant to learning anything. In the United States and other developed nations, otherwise intelligent people denigrate intellectual achievement and reject the advice of experts. Not only do increasing numbers of laypeople lack basic knowledge, they reject fundamental rules of evidence and refuse to learn how to make a logical argument.
~ Thomas M. Nichols
Unable to see their own biases, most people will simply drive each other crazy arguing rather than accept answers that contradict what they already think about the subject. The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt summed it up neatly when he observed that when facts conflict with our values, "almost everyone finds a way to stick with their values and reject the evidence."15
~ Thomas M. Nichols
Our culture does not recognize the value of being process oriented, even though we see so much evidence for it in the work produced by countries that do.
~ Thomas M. Sterner
he'd paid for should have led me to greater abstraction, but while it's true that the farther you get from an actual product the better your chances for economic success, I and many of my classmates wanted more physical evidence of our efforts.
~ Thomas McGuane
I have shown in all the foregoing parts of this work that the Bible and Testament are impositions and forgeries; and I leave the evidence I have produced in proof of it to be refuted, if any one can do it; and I leave the ideas that are suggested in the conclusion of the work to rest on the mind of the reader; certain as I am that when opinions are free, either in matters of govemment or religion, truth will finally and powerfully prevail.
~ Thomas Paine
That advice should be taken wherever example has failed, or precept be regarded where warning is ridiculed, is like a picture of hope resting on despair; but when time shall stamp with universal currency the facts you have long encountered with a laugh, and the irresistible evidence of accumulated losses, like the handwriting on the wall, shall ad terror to distress, you will then, in a conflict of suffering, learn to sympathize with others by feeling for yourselves.
~ Thomas Paine
if the writers of these four books had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears cropt for perjury
~ Thomas Paine
It is not the antiquity of a tale that is an evidence of its truth; on the contrary, it is a symptom of its being fabulous; for the more ancient any history pretends to be, the more it has the resemblance of a fable.
~ Thomas Paine
But though such a belief might, by such means, be rendered almost general among the laity, it is next to impossible to account for the continual persecution carried on by the church, for several hundred years, against the sciences, and against the professors of science, if the church had not some record or tradition that it was originally no other than a pious fraud, or did not foresee that it could not be maintained against the evidence that the structure of the universe afforded. CHAPTER
~ Thomas Paine
It has been by rejecting the evidence, that the word, or works of God in the creation, affords to our senses, and the action of our reason upon that evidence, that so many wild and whimsical systems of faith, and of religion, have been fabricated and set up.
~ Thomas Paine
Instead of this, a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas did not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.
~ Thomas Paine
Uydurma olmayan ve içinde özgün ilahiliÄŸin tüm kan?tlar?n? bar?nd?ran tek din saf ve basit deizmdir
~ Thomas Paine
There may be many systems of religion that so far from being morally bad are in many respects morally good: but there can be but ONE that is true; and that one necessarily must, as it ever will, be in all things consistent with the ever existing word of God that we behold in his works. But such is the strange construction of the christian system of faith, that every evidence the heavens affords to man, either directly contradicts it or renders it absurd. It
~ Thomas Paine
2. Going Concern Unless there is evidence to the contrary, accountants assume that the life of the business entity is infinitely long. Obviously this assumption cannot be verified and is hardly ever true. But this assumption does greatly simplify the presentation of the financial position of the firm and aids in the preparation of financial statements.
~ Thomas R. Ittelson
And, if we have any evidence that the wisdom which formed the plan is in the man, we have the very same evidence, that the power which executed it is in him also.
~ Thomas Reid
In every chain of reasoning, the evidence of the last conclusion can be no greater than that of the weakest link of the chain, whatever may be the strength of the rest.
~ Thomas Reid