Evidence Quotes - Page 13

• 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.

  Glenn Greenwald

  Worry, Support, Challenges

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• I personally think honestly disclosing rather than hiding ones subjective values makes for more honest and trustworthy journalism. But no journalism - from the most stylistically objective to the most brazenly opinionated - has any real value unless it is grounded in facts, evidence, and verifiable data.

  Glenn Greenwald

  Real, Thinking, Data

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• The definition of an extreme authoritarian is one who is willing blindly to assume that government accusations are true without any evidence presented or opportunity to contest those accusations.

  Glenn Greenwald

  Opportunity, Government, Definitions

  "Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens" by Glenn Greenwald, www.theguardian.com. February 5, 2013.

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• God is undoubtedly ready to pardon whenever the sinner turns. Therefore, he does not will his death, in so far as he wills repentance. But experience shows that this will, for the repentance of those whom he invites to himself, is not such as to make him touch all their hearts. Still, it cannot be said that he acts deceitfully; for though the external word only renders, those who hear it, and do not obey it, inexcusable, it is still truly regarded as an evidence of the grace by which he reconciles men to himself.

  John Calvin

  Heart, Men, Grace

  John Calvin “The Institutes Of The Christian Religion, Books Third and Fourth”, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The Enlightenment was an attempt to liberate myth and base truth claims on evidence, not just dogma. But when science threw out the church, they threw out the baby with the bath water.

  Ken Wilber

  Baby, Water, Church

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• ...If peace were the goal of today's intellectuals, a failure of that magnitude -- and the evidence of unspeakable suffering on so large a scale -- would make them pause and check their statist premises. Instead, blind to everything but their hatred for capitalism, they are now asserting that 'poverty breeds wars' ... But the question is: What breeds poverty? If you look a the world of today and if you look back at history, you will see the answer: the degree of a country's freedom is the degree of its prosperity.

  Ayn Rand

  Country, War, Goal

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• The evidence for evolution is so compelling that the only way to save the creation theory is to assume that God deliberately planted enormous quantities of evidence to make it look as if evolution had happened.

  Richard Dawkins

  Enormous Quantities, Looks, Way

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• The way in which I know Christianity is true is first and foremost is the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart. And this gives me self-authenticating means of knowing Christianity is true wholly apart from the evidence. And therefore, even if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity, I do not think that controverts the witness of the Holy Spirit.

  William Lane Craig

  Mean, Heart, Thinking

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• No evidence compels the conclusion that the minimum required intake of any vitamin comes close to the optimum intake that sustains good health.

  Linus Pauling

  Vitamins, Good Health, Conclusion

  Linus Pauling (1987). “How to Live Longer and Feel Better”

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• One reason why I recommend the abandonment of religious beliefs is because I think those beliefs are wrong. There is no evidence that our world was created by divine intention, that a god intercedes in human affairs, or that there is life after death. Religion is a hangover from humankind's timorous infancy; it's time for us to walk upright and unafraid, and to take charge of our own lives.

  Simon LeVay

  Religious, Hangover, Thinking

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• Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvellous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified.

  Thomas Huxley

  Passion, Self, Prejudice

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• No one has ever found an organism that is known not to have parents, or a parent. This is the strongest evidence on behalf of evolution.

  Tom Bethell

  Parent, Evolution, Found

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• History is a long and endlessly interesting argument, where evidence is everything and storytelling is everything else.

  Jill Lepore

  Long, Interesting, Argument

  "Just the Facts, Ma'am" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. March 24, 2008.

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• The thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of decay but rather a proof of health and vigor.

  H. L. Mencken

  Peace, War, Mean

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.22, Knopf

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• I have hitherto followed the lines marked out by the Theist in his attempt to prove that there exists a mind behind natural phenomena, and that the universe as we have it is, at least generally, an evidence of a plan designed by this mind. I have also pointed out that the only datum for such a conclusion is the universe we know. We must take that as a starting point. We can get neither behind it nor beyond it. We cannot start with God and deduce the universe from his existence; we must start with the world as we know it, and deduce God from the world.

  Chapman Cohen

  Data, Mind, Atheism

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• I do believe that nice religious people make the world safe for extremists by teaching us [...] that faith is a virtue, teaching us that there's something good about holding beliefs without any substantiating evidence. Once you buy into that, [...] then the door is opened to extremists who defend their extremism by saying, 'Oh well, it's my faith, you can't touch it, you can't criticise my faith, I don't even need to defend it because faith is faith.'

  Richard Dawkins

  Religious, Nice, Believe

  "Richard Dawkins at the Sydney Writers' Festival". Interview with Robyn Williams, www.abc.net.au. September 8, 2007.

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• People who believe in something for which there is not a shred of evidence act on that belief and, above all, impose their beliefs on others, they make me cross, and they make me especially cross when they impose their beliefs on defenceless children.

  Richard Dawkins

  Children, Believe, People

  "Richard Dawkins at the Sydney Writers' Festival". Interview with Robyn Williams, www.abc.net.au. September 8, 2007.

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• 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.

  Richard Dawkins

  Children, Powerful, Believe

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• History has got a lot to do with unique circumstances under certain particular cases and grand theories will always find counter cases. I don't think that people whose expertise lies in one thing should try to make grand theories about something (a) where it's very hard to get the evidence to prove that you're right and (b) where it's much too easy to make up stories that seem right.

  Richard Lewontin

  Lying, Unique, Thinking

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• When I was younger, I'd get very empirical with myself. "I have a hypothesis about myself. I'll put myself in a situation, see what happens, then I'll draw a conclusion based on the empirical evidence. Hypothesis: I can play basketball." So I'd try. "Conclusion: I cannot play basketball."

  Demetri Martin

  Basketball, Play, Trying

  Interview with Litsa Dremousis, www.believermag.com. February 2006.

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• If you work through the existing structures you are going to be corrupted. By working through political system that poisons the atmosphere, even the progressive organizations, you can see it even nowadays in the US, where people on the "Left" are all caught in the electoral campaign and get into fierce arguments about should we support this third party candidate or that third party candidate. This is a sort of little piece of evidence that suggests that when you get into working through electoral politics you begin to corrupt your ideals.

  Howard Zinn

  Party, Organization, People

  "Rebels Against Tyranny". Interview with Ziga Vodovnik, www.counterpunch.org. May 12, 2008.

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• But perhaps that's why we take snaps...to provide false evidence to underpin the false claim that we were happy. Because the thought that we weren't happy at least for some time during our lives is unbearable. Adults order children to smile in the photos, involve them in the lie, so we smile, we feign happiness.

  Jo Nesbo

  Children, Lying, Order

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• Atheists who keep asking for evidence of God's existence are like a fish in the ocean wanting evidence of water.

  Ray Comfort

  Atheist, Ocean, Water

  FaceBook post by Ray Comfort from Feb 21, 2013

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• Oftentimes, the only evidence left behind at the scene of a shooting are bullet shell casings.

  Grace Meng

  Shells, Shooting, Bullets

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• We should all oppose - as Darwin did - views manifestly in conflict with the evidence, such as creationism... But we shouldn't set up this debate as 'religion v science'; instead we should strive for peaceful coexistence with at least the less dogmatic strands of mainstream religions, which number many excellent scientists among their adherents.

  Martin Rees

  Views, Numbers, Peaceful

  "Martin Rees: Atheists should drop anti-religion campaigns" by Ian Sample, www.theguardian.com. April 24, 2011.

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