Home / Topics / Evidence Quotes

Evidence Quotes

Browse 2987 quotes about Evidence.

Evidence Quotes

“There is no evidence that suggests women are naturally better at caring for children... with the fact of child-bearing out of the centre of attention, there is even more reason for treating girls first as human beings, then as women.”

Firsts Humans Children Reason Facts Girl Human Beings Attention Evidence Caring Centre Child Care Centre Of Attention

Author:Margaret Mead

“The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of a sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America.”

Source: The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“History is filled with tragic examples of wars that result from diplomatic impasse. Whether in our local communities or in international relations, the skillful use of our communicative capacities to negotiate and resolve differences is the first evidence of human wisdom.”

“[My] pictures are about memory and forgetfulness. The evidence is dissolving. Bones crumble; human ash returns to soil; teeth, sandals, hair, bullets, axes disperse into atoms and molecules. Footprints in the snow will be erased by the next storm. The evidence of evil, like the evidence of good, obeys the universal laws of entropy. Heat cools, matter disintegrates, memories fade. If we let them.”

“I am not a global warming sceptic. I accept that rising human-caused CO2 from fossil sources could 'change the climate'. The basic physics is there to support this view. But where is the evidence that the putative change would be large or damaging?”

Humans Would Be Views Accepting Support Source Evidence Climate Physics Rising Global Warming Fossils Co2 Sceptic

Author:Chris de Freitas

“The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth. I'm not contending in a dogmatic way that there is not a God. What I'm contending is that we don't know that there is. I don't like the word "absolute." I don't think there is anything absolute whatever. The moral law, for example, is always changing. At one period in the development of the human race, almost everybody thought cannibalism was a duty.”

Thinking Knows Men Way Humans Facts Law Belief Race Moral Effects Example Duty Development Periods Evidence Absolutes Favors Human Race Dogmatic Moral Law Cannibalism Contending Good Moral

Author:Bertrand Russell

“There is no limit to suffering human beings have been willing to inflict on others, no matter how innocent, no matter how young, and no matter how old. This fact must lead all reasonable human beings, that is, all human beings who take evidence seriously, to draw only one possible conclusion: Human nature is not basically good.”

Humans Has Beens Matter Facts Young Suffering Human Beings Human Nature Willing Limits Draws Evidence Innocent Conclusion Reasonable

Book:Dennis Prager: Volume I

Source: Dennis Prager: Volume I

“Where do we say that a cell became a blade of grass, which became a starfish, which became a cat, which became a donkey, which became a human being? There's a real lack of evidence from change from actual species to a different type of species.”

Humans Different Real Human Beings Type Evidence Cat Species Cells Grass Blades Being There Donkey Blades Of Grass Starfish

Author:Michele Bachmann

“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

“Eventually, humans invented agriculture, which could be understood as a way of turning the natural world into a tool for our use. There's evidence that we have been domesticating crops and animals for at least 15,000 years, adapting ecosystems to our preferred way of life.”

World Way Years Humans Has Beens Use Natural Animal Understood Evidence Tools Agriculture Natural World Crops Ecosystems Adapting

Author:Annalee Newitz

“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!)”

Giving Humans Ideas Real Might Action Used Term Moral Offers Evidence Accounts Philosophical Categories Realist Flourishing Affinity Right Action

Author:Hilary Kornblith

“When I try to outline the history of ethical life, it's sometimes possible to find evidence for a hypothesis about how important transitions actually went. Often, however, that isn't so. There are many facts about human life in the Paleolithic we're never likely to know.”

Knows Trying Humans Important Sometimes Facts Evidence Human Life Ethical Transition Hypothesis Outlines

Author:Philip Kitcher

“The climate has been changing. Of course it [has]. Evidence throughout history, [which] we can assess, especially during human history, shows there have been ups and downs. But the last ten thousand years have been relatively stable compared to now.”

Years Humans Has Beens Shows Lasts Courses Thousand Ten Evidence Climate Stable Thousand Years Human History Ups & Downs

Author:Sylvia Earle

“If we want to know how the Earth's biosphere is going to respond to the things that humans are doing to the planet right now, the only evidence that we have is how biotic systems have responded in the past.”

Ifs Knows Want Humans Earth Past Know How Planets Right Now Evidence Biosphere

Author:Kenneth Lacovara

“There's no doubt if you could go 5, 10, 15 million years into the future and dig down to 2016, you would be able to find the geological evidence that humans occupied the planet.”

Ifs Years Humans Would Be Able Millions Doubt Planets Evidence No Doubt

Author:Kenneth Lacovara

“You could paper the globe with evidence that there are demonstrable cognitive and physical disparities between what are crudely called human "races." But you could fit all the evidence of innate equality on your pinkie fingernail with room to spare.”

Humans Rooms Race Fit Paper Evidence Human Race Globes Spares Innate Cognitive Disparity Fingernails

Author:Jim Goad

“Anatomically modern humans are found up to 200,000 years ago; behaviourally modern humans appear very recently in evolutionary time, as far as evidence now exists, perhaps within a window of 50-100,000 years ago, a flick of an eye in evolutionary time.”

Years Humans Eye Found Modern Evidence Years Ago Window

Author:Noam Chomsky

“I enjoy places that have mystery and atmosphere, perhaps a patina of age, a suggestion rather than a description, a question or two. I look for memories, traces, evidence of the human interaction with the landscape. Sometimes I photograph pure nature, sometimes urban structures.”

Humans Looks Two Sometimes Age Enjoy Memories Mystery Pure Evidence Structure Photograph Landscape Atmosphere Description Interaction Urban Suggestions

Author:Michael Kenna

“Very close cousins like humans and chimps have almost all their genes in common. Slightly less close cousins like humans and monkeys still have recognizably the same genes. You could carry on right on down to humans and bacteria, and you will find continuous compelling evidence for the hierarchical tree of cousinship.”

Humans Stills Common Tree Evidence Genes Compelling Monkeys Cousin Bacteria

Author:Richard Dawkins

“In the Bible angels speak and humans speak back to them. This is the case with Mary in Luke 1. The angel speaks, Mary questions, and it goes back and forth. Abraham speaks with angels. So I would contend the Bible has enough evidence of angels speaking and humans speaking that speaking with an angel today would be reasonable. I've heard enough stories and read such that confirm that Christians today do speak with angels.”

Humans Enough Stories Would Be Today Christian Speak Cases Heard Evidence Angel Reasonable Mary Back And Forth Abraham Luke

Author:Scot McKnight

“When climate change gets some attention in a 100-page document, the most important parts of which will have to do with the theology of stewardship and the theology of "human ecology," it's almost certainly going to be rapturously embraced, or bitterly opposed, as a "global-warming encyclical," despite the evidence that it's much more broadly gauged than that.”

Humans Important Attention Pages Evidence Climate Climate Change Theology Despite Global Warming Documents Ecology Stewardship

Author:George Weigel

“To me, the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable - the rhetoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self-inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth, or heal our sick planet, is evidence of our immense capacity for self delusion. Rather, we need to protect ourselves from ourselves.”

“All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.”

Humans Growth Change Human Beings Baby Evidence Assuming Active Impulse Reasonable Newborn Actualization Newborn Baby

Author:Abraham Maslow

“An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason.”

Mind Humans Reason Liberty Evidence Tradition Rejection Free Will Fundamentalism Certitude

Author:Jon Meacham

“Faced with the evidence, many deniers have started to admit that global warming is real, but argue that humans have little or nothing to do with it.”

Humans Littles Real Evidence Arguing Global Warming

Author:David Suzuki

“I do not know of any credible evidence that suggests Dr Zavos can clone a human being. This seems to be yet another one of his claims to get repeated publicity.”

Knows Humans Seems Human Beings Evidence Claims Drs Publicity Credible

Author:Robert Winston

“In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”

“A kernel of truth lurks at the heart of religion, because spiritual experience, ethical behavior, and strong communities are essential for human happiness. And yet our religious traditions are intellectually defunct and politically ruinous. While spiritual experience is clearly a natural propensity of the human mind, we need not believe anything on insufficient evidence to actualize it.”

Source: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

“I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.”

People Knows Humans Faith Belief Support Evidence Core Skepticism Human History Core Beliefs

Book:Letter to a Christian Nation

Source: Letter to a Christian Nation

“Human beings act in a great variety of irrational ways, but all of them seem to be capable, if given a fair chance, of making a reasonable choice in the light of available evidence. Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality. But today, in the world's most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors.”

Source: Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948

“I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe - what other choice was there? We do it every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery. To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in thetreatent, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing.”

“You have made me ashamed of the wasted years. You have made me acknowledge that no darkness has ever been deep enough to extinguish my personal knowledge of love. And all around me in this world I see evidence of love. I see love. I see it in the human struggle. I see its undeniable penetration in all that humans have accomplished in their poetry, their painting, their music, their love of one another and refusal to accept suffering as their lot.”

World Years Humans Made Enough Suffering Accepting Darkness Struggle This World Painting Evidence Acknowledge Accomplished Ashamed Refusal Penetration Personal Knowledge

Author:Anne Rice

“The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.”

Mind Believe Humans Religion Sin Atheism Evidence Human Mind Rationality Religion God Morality And Religion Religion War Religion And War

Author:Aldous Huxley

“The idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a sacred human convention—distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims and by the paucity of its evidence—is really too great a monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory. Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.”

Source: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

“He read reports, examined evidence, and poured more reports up the chain than the Pentagon could read. Nothing short of a human sieve. But in the end he was just one small piece on this game board called war. End of story”

Humans War Ends Stories Games Pieces Evidence Chains Boards Just One Reports Pentagon Small Pieces

Book:Bone Man's Daughters

Source: Bone Man's Daughters

“Many people think of our times as being the last before the end of the world. The evidence of horror all around us makes this seem possible. But isn't that an idea of only minor importance? Doesn't every human being, no matter which era he lives in, always have to reckon with being accountable to God at any moment? Can I know whether I'll be alive tomorrow morning? A bomb could destroy all of us tonight. And then my guilt would not be one bit less than if I perished together with the arth and the stars.”

“While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers. Anyone caught worshipping Poseidon, even at sea, will be thought insane.”

Source: Letter to a Christian Nation

“The world is not moved by love or actions that are of human creation. And the church is not empowered to live differently from any other gathering of people without the Holy Spirit. But when believers live in the power of the Spirit, the evidence in their lives is supernatural. The church cannot help but be different, and the world cannot help but notice.”

People World Humans Different Helping Action Life Is Spirit Church Creation Holy Evidence Moved Believer Holy Spirit Gathering Empowered

Book:The Francis Chan Collection: Crazy Love, Forgotten God, Erasing Hell, and Multiply

Source: The Francis Chan Collection: Crazy Love, Forgotten God, Erasing Hell, and Multiply

“The Fundamentalist Christians have told me that I am a slave of Satan and should have my demons expelled with an exorcism. The Fundamentalist Materialists inform me that I am a liar, charlatan, fraud and scoundrel. Aside from this minor difference, the letters are astoundingly similar. Both groups share the same crusading zeal and the same lack of humor, charity and common human decency. These intolerable cults have served to confirm me in my agnosticism by presenting further evidence to support my contention that when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases.”

“Physician Albert Scheweitzer said. " We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness." Professor Leo Buscaglia notes, "There seems to be accumulating evidence that there is actually an inborn need for this togetherness, this human interaction, this love. It seems that without these close ties with other human beings, a new born infant, for example, can regress developmentally, lose consciousness, fall into idiocy and die.”

Needs Humans Said Seems Together Dies Fall Born Loses Human Beings Consciousness Dying Loneliness Example Evidence Notes Ties Professors Interaction Physicians Infant Togetherness Idiocy

Author:Gary Chapman

“Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life. While there remains even a plaintive memory, a person cannot be cut off, dead. And he thought, “It’s a long slow process for a human to die. We kill a cow, and it is dead as soon as the meat is eaten, but a man’s life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness.”

Men Humans Littles Persons Long Stills Dies Process Memories Cutting Growing Effects Changed Evidence Remains Wave Meat Pool Stillness Cows

Book:Novels and Stories, 1932-1937

Source: Novels and Stories, 1932-1937

“To accept the fact that, after fertilization has taken place, a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion. The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical conception. It is plain experimental evidence.”

Humans Matter Facts Age Human Beings Accepting Opinion Taken Human Nature Taste Evidence Old Age Abortion Conception Metaphysical Fertilization

Author:Jerome Lejeune

“Liberty is the very last idea that seems to occur to anybody, in considering any political or social proposal. It is only necessary for anybody for any reason to allege any evidence of any evil in any human practice, for people instantly to suggest that the practice should be suppressed by the police.”

People Should Humans Ideas Reason Seems Lasts Political Evil Social Liberty Practice Evidence Police Considering Proposal

Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton

“Blushing is the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions. Monkeys redden from passion, but it would require an overwhelming amount of evidence to make us believe that any animal could blush.”

Believe Humans Passion Animal Human Nature Expression Amount Evidence Overwhelming Peculiar Monkeys Blushing

Author:Charles Darwin

“The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of a universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of willful alteration, are themselves evidences that human language, whether in speech or print, cannot be the vehicle of the Word of God.”

Source: THOMAS PAINE Ultimate Collection: Political Works, Philosophical Writings, Speeches, Letters & Biography (Including Common Sense, The Rights of Man & The Age of Reason): The American Crisis, The Constitution of 1795, Declaration of Rights, Agrarian Justice, The Republican Proclamation, Anti-Monarchal Essay, Letters to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…

“Space-ships and time machines are no escape from the human condition. Let Othello subject Desdemona to a lie-detector test; his jealousy will still blind him to the evidence. Let Oedipus triumph over gravity; he won't triumph over his fate.”

Humans Stills Lying Space Technology Fate Conditions Subjects Evidence Tests Machines Blind Ships Triumph Gravity Human Condition Star Gazing Time Machine Oedipus Desdemona

Author:Arthur Koestler

“I hope that someday we will find evidence that there is intelligent life among humans on this planet.”

Humans Inspiration Motivation Sea Planets Ocean Evidence Intelligent Someday Conservation Intelligent Life Ocean Conservation

Author:Sylvia Earle

“Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist, nor what sort of form they may have; there are many reasons why knowledge on this subject is not possible, owing to the lack of evidence and the shortness of human life.”

Humans May Mean Reason God Form Science Existence Knowledge Knowing Subjects Evidence Human Life Reason Why Owing Shortness

Author:Protagoras

“"I believe that no characteristic is so distinctively human as the sense of indebtedness we feel, not necessarily for a favor received, but even for the slightest evidence of kindness; and there is nothing so boorish, savage, inhuman as to appear to be overwhelmed by a favor, let alone unworthy of it."”

Inspirational Feels Believe Humans I Believe Kindness Evidence Favors Characteristics Savages Overwhelmed Unworthy Inhuman Inspirational Kindness Indebtedness

Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Courage is the human virtue that counts most-courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That's all any of us have.”

Humans Challenges Knowledge Courage Virtue Evidence Have Courage Insufficient Limited Knowledge

Author:Robert Frost