Proof Quotes - Page 34

• I am obliged to interpolate some remarks on a very difficult subject: proof and its importance in mathematics. All physicists, and a good many quite respectable mathematicians, are contemptuous about proof. I have heard Professor Eddington, for example, maintain that proof, as pure mathematicians understand it, is really quite uninteresting and unimportant, and that no one who is really certain that he has found something good should waste his time looking for proof.

  G. H. Hardy

  Good Man, Example, Waste

  "Ramanujan: Twelve Lectures on Subjects Suggested by His Life and Work". Book by G. H. Hardy, 1940.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• There were no Latin people on 'Star Trek,' that this was proof that they weren't planning to have us around for the future.

  John Leguizamo

  Stars, Latin, People

  "John Leguizamo: 'Freak,' and proud of it". edition.cnn.com. November 2, 1998.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If English money was of the same value then as before, Hamburgh money must have risen in value. But where is the proof of this?

  David Ricardo

  Risen, Ifs, Values

  David Ricardo, John Ramsay McCulloch (1846). “The Works of David Ricardo, Esq., M.P.: With a Notice of the Life and Writings of the Author”, p.85

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• [A]t the beginning of November 2001, there was a series of meetings between White House advisers and senior Hollywood executives with the aim of co-ordinating the war effort and establishing how Hollywood could help in the "war against terrorism" by getting the right ideological message across not only to Americans, but also to the Hollywood public around the globe the ultimate empirical proof that Hollywood does in fact function as an "ideological state apparatus.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Senior, War, White

  Slavoj Žižek (2002). “Welcome to the Desert of the Real!: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates”, p.16, Verso

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• By a kind of happy pre-established harmony, such as a later age discovered between the needs of society and the self-interest of the individual, success in business is in itself almost a sign of spiritual grace, for it is a proof that a man has laboured faithfully in his vocation.

  R. H. Tawney

  Spiritual, Men, Self

  R. H. Tawney (2016). “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism”, p.210, Verso Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Christianity claims that the supernatural is as reasonable as the natural, that man himself is supernatural as truly as he is natural, and that the Bible is so clearly the word of God by proofs that are unanswerable, that it is unreasonable to disbelieve its divine truths.

  Abbott Eliot Kittredge

  Bible, Men, Christianity

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 35, 1895.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I HAVE no patience with the hypothesis occasionally expressed, and often implied, especially in tales written to teach children to be good, that babies are born pretty much alike, and that the sole agencies in creating differences between boy and boy, and man and man, are steady application and moral effort. It is in the most unqualified manner that I object to pretensions of natural equality. The experiences of the nursery, the school, the University, and of professional careers, are a chain of proofs to the contrary.

  Francis Galton

  Baby, Children, School

  Sir Francis Galton (1870). “Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry Into Its Laws and Consequences”, p.14

  77 Copy quote

  Show source

• Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.

  Francis Collins

  Dna, Doubt, Records

  "Collins: Why This Scientist Believes in God" by Francis Collins, edition.cnn.com. April 06, 2007.

  58 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Soul is a fact, but it is not physical. ... Survivors of near-death experiences attest that some part of them apparently detaches from their physical bodies following the death of the body, but while that is proof of the soul for them, it does not prove it to us. The Soul is like divine music that only God can hear; it is the force of endless resurrection; the soul is like a fire that never goes out.

  Caroline Myss

  Fire, Soul, Doe

  "Entering the Castle: An Inner Path to God and Your Soul". Book by Caroline Myss, 2007.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The cookbook gives a detailed description of ingredients and procedures but no proofs for its prescriptions or reasons for its recipes; the proof of the pudding is in the eating. ... Mathematics cannot be tested in exactly the same manner as a pudding; if all sorts of reasoning are debarred, a course of calculus may easily become an incoherent inventory of indigestible information.

  George Polya

  Giving, Pudding, Inventory

  "How to Solve It" by George Polya, Expanded Princeton Science Library Edition, (p. 219), 2004.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• No longer a mark of distinction or proof of achievement, a college education is these days a mere rite of passage, a capstone to adolescent party time.

  William A. Henry III

  Party, College, Achievement

  William A. Henry, III (2015). “In Defense of Elitism”, p.169, Anchor

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thus evidence that contradicts the global warming theory, climate Chicken Littles enlist as evidence for the correctness of their theory; every permutation in weather patterns — warm or cold — is said to be a consequence of that warming or proof of it.

  Ilana Mercer

  Weather, Climate, Patterns

  "Reincarnation of the Reds". www.wnd.com. December 29, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• All mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside it. The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ.

  Eric Hoffer

  Reality, Faithful, Doctrine

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• The prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hinderances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement.

  John Stuart Mill

  Sex, Block, Character

  John Stuart Mill (2009). “Autobiography of John Stuart Mill”, p.270, The Floating Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is indeed a striking proof of the essential soundness of the tradition that with which all these thousands of copies, tracing their ancestry back to so many different parts of the earth and to conditions of such diverse kinds, the variations of text are so entirely questions of detail, not of essential substance.

  Frederic G. Kenyon

  Earth, Ancestry, Essentials

  "The Story Of The Bible" by Frederic G. Kenyon. Ch. X, The Position Today, p. 136, 1949.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• An over-readiness to criticise or to depreciate a minister of Christ is proof of a lack of devotion to Christ.

  Henry Clay Trumbull

  Christ, Devotion, Ministers

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 168), 1895.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Faith is belief without proof. Faith is fine, but don't call it science.

  Loyd Auerbach

  Faith, Belief, Fine

  4 Copy quote

• The apparently unendurable conflict is proof of the rightness of your life. A life without contradiction is only half a life; or else a life in the Beyond, which is destined only for angels. But God loves human beings more than the angels.

  Carl Jung

  Angel, Half, Conflict

  10 Copy quote

• Margaret Miles offers a stunning treatment of human experience, coaxing humans to leave dualisms behind and embrace our intelligent bodies. In a foundational text, she draws on the arts, philosophy and theology, and her experience as a hospice volunteer to explore concrete alternatives to privileging the rational mind. Her erudition, wisdom, and graceful writing are compelling proof of the intelligent body.

  Mary E. Hunt

  Art, Philosophy, Writing

  5 Copy quote

• As far as I know, Clifford Pickover is the first mathematician to write a book about areas where math and theology overlap. Are there mathematical proofs of God? Who are the great mathematicians who believed in a deity? Does numerology lead anywhere when applied to sacred literature? Pickover covers these and many other off-trail topics with his usual verve, humor, and clarity. And along the way the reader will learn a great deal of serious mathematics.

  Martin Gardner

  Book, Writing, Math

  6 Copy quote

• The best thing you can do is go away from this saying, 'I can do this too,' because it's all possible and I'm living proof.

  Ralph Lauren

  Going Away, Best Things, I Can

  7 Copy quote

• When the world is made to be idiot-proof, the world will become overpopulated with idiots.

  Mark Twain

  World, Idiot, Made

  6 Copy quote

• Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgement of his own works. On that which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain: what has been produced without toilsome efforts is considered with delight as a proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work, whatever it be, has necessarily most of the grace of novelty.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Thinking, Effort

  Samuel Johnson (1787). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with His Life, and Notes on His Lives of the Poets, by Sir John Hawkins, Knt. In Eleven Volumes ...”, p.136

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In virtually every Continental state at this time, aristocracies had to live with the risk that their property might be pillaged or confiscated. Only in Great Britain did it prove possible to float the idea that aristocratic property was in some magical and strictly intangible way the people's property also. The fact that hundreds of thousands of men and women today are willing to accept that privately owned country houses and their contents are part of Britain's national heritage is one more proof of how successfully the British elite reconstructed its cultural image in an age of revolution.

  Linda Colley

  Country, Men, Ideas

  Linda Colley (2005). “Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837”, p.177, Yale University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• David Irving has consistenly applied an evidential double standard, demanding absolute documentary proof to convict the Germans (as when he sought to show that Hitler was not responsible for the Holocaust), while relying on circumstantial evidence to condemn the British (as in his account of the Allied bombing of Dresden).

  David Cannadine

  Holocaust, Double Standard, Documentaries

  David Cannadine (1998). “History in Our Time”, p.224, Yale University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source