Best evidence & authority Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Custom and authority are no sure evidence of truth.”

“History is replete with examples of what happens when any group of authorities do not have to answer to empirical evidence but are free to define truth as they see fit. None of the examples has a happy ending. Why should it be otherwise with therapy?”

Should Happens Answers Groups Example Fit Authority Evidence Therapy Happy Endings Empirical Evidence

Author:Robert Todd Carroll

“Put the money into schools. Rational ones that train young minds to think, to demand that persons in authority show the evidence for the ideas they push. Do that, and we won't need to provide a world for the Sacred Brethren who, given the opportunity, would run everyone else off the planet.”

Thinking World Needs Mind Persons Ideas Shows Running School Young Opportunity Given Planets Demand Authority Evidence Sacred Train Rational Brethren Young Minds

Author:Jack McDevitt

“Science has authority not because of white coats or titles, but because of precision and transparency: you explain your theory, set out your evidence, and reference the studies that support your case.”

White Cases Support Study Theory Authority Evidence Titles Coats Transparency Precision White Coat

Book:I Think You’ll Find It’s a Bit More Complicated Than That

Source: I Think You’ll Find It’s a Bit More Complicated Than That

“All of the evidence highlights the implicit bargain that is offered to citizens: pose no challenge and you have nothing to worry about. Mind your own business, and support or at least tolerate what we do, and you'll be fine. Put differently, you must refrain from provoking the authority that wields surveillance powers if you wish to be deemed free of wrongdoing. This is a deal that invites passivity, obedience, and conformity. The safest course, the way to ensure being “left alone,” is to remain quiet, unthreatening, and compliant.”

“Some sort of belief in all-powerful supernatural beings is common, if not universal. A tendency to obey authority, perhaps especially in children, a tendency to believe what you're told, a tendency to fear your own death, a tendency to wish to see your loved ones who have died, to wish to see them again, a wish to understand where you came from, where the world came from, all these psychological predispositions, under the right cultural conditions, tend to lead to people believing in things for which there is no evidence.”

People Ifs World Believe Children Belief Wish Powerful Common Conditions Authority Evidence Universal Died Tendencies Psychological Loved Ones Supernatural Beings

Author:Richard Dawkins

“The beauty of new media is that no evidence is necessary. The brave blog-troopers have stormed the cockpit of news, and wrestled the joystick of authority away from the seasoned pilots of the press who would land our country at the Facts International Airport.”

Country Facts Land Media Authority News Evidence Presses Brave International Our Country Pilots Airports Blogs New Media Cockpit

Author:Stephen Colbert

“In such systems, there is unquestioning respect for authority. Faith trumps evidence. But if indeed this is broadly the explanation for how co-operative behaviour has evolved and been maintained in human societies, it could be very bad news. Because although such authoritarian systems seem to be good at preserving social coherence and an orderly society, they are, by the same token, not good at adapting to change.”

Ifs Humans Seems Social Trump Authority News Evidence Be Good Explanation Behaviour Bad News Human Society Orderly Tokens Adapting Coherence Adapting To Change

Author:Robert May, Baron May of Oxford

“I have begun drafting a memorandum for the prosecuting authorities, together with all evidence necessary to establish not only the existence of numerous specific instances of scientific or economic fraud in relation to the official "global warming" storyline but also the connections between these instances, and the overall scheme of deception that the individual artifices appear calculated to reinforce.”

“In no other field of scientific endeavor do otherwise intelligent people feel free to make public claims based on prejudice and ignorance. Yet in relation to psychic phenomena, committed materialists feel free to disregard the evidence and behave irrationally and unscientifically, while claiming to speak in the name of science and reason. They abuse the authority of science and bring rationalism into disrepute.”

Source: Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery

“In all things, therefore, where we have clear evidence from our ideas, and those principles of knowledge I have above mentioned, reason is the proper judge; and revelation, though it may, in consenting with it, confirm its dictates, yet cannot in such cases invalidate its decrees: nor can we be obliged, where we have the clear and evident sentience of reason, to quit it for the contrary opinion, under a pretence that it is matter of faith: which can have no authority against the plain and clear dictates of reason.”

May Ideas Matter Reason Faith Opinion Principles Cases Clear Judging Authority Evidence All Things Contrary Quitting Revelations Evident Obliged Decree Pretence

Book:An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

“To defy the authority of empirical evidence is to disqualify oneself as someone worthy of critical engagement in a dialogue.”

Authority Evidence Oneself Worthy Critical Dialogue Engagement Empirical Evidence

Author:Dalai Lama

“...[the federal] government [has no authority] to deliver a service,...and there's no evidence to show that government has ever been efficient [at] delivering...service.”

Shows Government Authority Evidence Efficient Federal Government Delivering

Author:Ron Paul

“What evidence do we have that states are incapable of further exercising an authority they have exercised successfully for over 200 years?”

Years States Exercise Authority Evidence Incapable

Author:John McCain

“Anarchists believe that we can govern ourselves in the absence of coercive and centralized authority; the underlying premise about human nature (to use an infinitely problematized but necessary term here) is fundamentally positive. And the evidence that in disasters people are really pretty kind, generous, brave, resourceful and creative fed that.”

People Believe Humans Kind Use Term Creative Human Nature Authority Evidence Brave Absence Disaster Generous Feds Premises Anarchist Resourceful Really Pretty

Author:Rebecca Solnit

“The whole idea of what is evidence for causation in epidemiology cannot be separated from tTindustry understood that if they could raise doubt about how you could conclude something caused cancer, that they put so much effort into getting so many receptive public health authorities to say, "Well, causation requires that these five things be met." So that is, in fact, nonsense.”

Ifs Wells Ideas Whole Facts Effort Doubt Five Mets Authority Understood Evidence Raises Cancer Nonsense Public Health Receptive Causation Epidemiology

Author:Devra Davis

“It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.”

Men Believe Belief Authority Evidence Intuition Dogmatic

Book:History of Western Philosophy

Source: History of Western Philosophy

“The word "truth" itself ceases to have its old meaning. It describes no longer something to be found, with the individual conscience as the sole arbiter of whether in any particular instance the evidence (or the standing of those proclaiming it) warrants a belief; it becomes something to be laid down by authority, something which has to believed in the interest of unity of the organized effort and which may have to be altered as the exigencies of this organized effort require it.”

May Found Individual Belief Interest Effort Particular Authority Conscience Evidence Standing Unity Cease Instance Organized Sole Altered Warrants Proclaiming Arbiter

Author:Friedrich August von Hayek

“A discovery must be, by definition, at variance with existing knowledge. During my lifetime, I made two. Both were rejected offhand by the popes of the field. Had I predicted these discoveries in my applications, and had those authorities been my judges, it is evident what their decisions would have been.”

Has Beens Made Two Science Decision Existence Knowledge Fields Judging Authority Evidence Discovery Lifetime Definitions Application Rejected Pope Evident Variance

Author:Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

“The amount of knowledge which we can justify from evidence directly available to us can never be large. The overwhelming proportion of our factual beliefs continue therefore to be held at second hand through trusting others, and in the great majority of cases our trust is placed in the authority of comparatively few people of widely acknowledged standing.”

People Hands Science Belief Knowledge Cases Trust Amount Authority Evidence Standing Majority Available Proportion Justify Overwhelming Factual Second Hand Polymaths

Book:Personal Knowledge

Source: Personal Knowledge

“The strongest wish of a vast number of earnest men and women to-day is for a basis of religious belief which shall rest, not upon tradition or external authority or historical evidence, but upon the ascertainable facts of human experience. The craving for immediacy, which we have seen to be characteristic of all mysticism, now takes the form of a desire to establish the validity of the God-consciousness as a normal part of the healthy inner life.”

“With the eventual acceptance of Darwin's theory we reach a modern understanding of nature, one which has since then changed in detail rather than in fundamentals. Only those who prefer religious faith to beliefs based on reasoning and evidence can still maintain that the human species is the special darling of the entire universe, or that other animals were created to provide us with food, or that we have divine authority over them, and divine permission to kill them.”

“There was a time when intellectual meant someone who uses reason and intellect. Today, people who call themselves intellectuals are in a form of mental death spiral: they search for, and find, those index cards that support their world view, and clutch little red books like rosaries in the face of all external evidence. They are ruled by appeals to authority. Their self-image and sense of emotional well-being trumps any and all objective evidence to the contrary.”

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Evidence Quotes