“Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.”

— Arthur Miller

Why I Wrote 'The Crucible in The New Yorker (21 October 1996) https://archive.is/20130630000741/www.newyorker.com/archive/content/?020422fr_archive02

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its…" by Arthur Miller?

Arthur Miller147

playwright from the United States 1915–2005

Related quotes

“The remarkable thing about the Diversity cult is that all the circumstances of the actual human world refute its tenets, wherever we look. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that there has never been an ideology so heartily and jealously embraced by all the main institutions of a society, that was at the same time so obviously at odds with the evidence of our senses. It is as if the entire Western world had committed itself to the belief that human beings can fly by flapping their arms.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism (2009)

“Few of the virtues are really useful. Fidelity leads to lost opportunity, truth-telling to injured feelings, charity to additional solicitations. The least productive, and possibly the most overrated, is faith. The faithful deny reason, close their minds to the evidence of their senses, and remain unfailingly optimistic in the face of disaster. They inevitably get just what they deserve.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 27 (p. 375)

“If, then, faith so evidently surrounds us, why should it be so offensive? It is simply because faith is as essential to the spiritual realm as oxygen is to the natural realm. The professing atheist thinks that if he can get rid of any thought of faith he can get rid of Christianity. In trying to do so, he saws through the branch he is sitting on. His own faith in the erroneous information he has makes him think he is atheistic in his beliefs.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

“Science in fact has a lot to say about the supernatural. It can and has tested it, and so far has found no evidence for it…. Indeed, over its history science has repeatedly investigated supernatural claims and, in principle, could find strong evidence for them. But that evidence hasn’t appeared.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 113

“Giacomo Rizzolatti… calls these "mirror neurons" and suggests that they provide the first insight into imitation, identification, empathy, and possibly the ability to mime vocalization—the mental processes intrinsic to human interaction. Vilayanur Ramachandran has found evidence of comparable neurons in the premotor cortex of people. …one can see a whole new area of biology opening up… that can give us a sense of what makes us social, communicating beings. An ambitious undertaking of this sort might… teach us something about the factors that give rise to tribalism, which is so often associated with fear, hatred, and intolerance of outsiders.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

In Search of Memory (2006)

“The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

BBC Radio Debate on the Existence of God, Russell vs. Copleston (1948)
1940s

“It must be in something that man could not make, that we must seek evidence for our belief, and that something is the universe; the true bible; the inimitable word, of God.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)
Context: The universe is the bible of a true Theophilanthropist. It is there that he reads of God. It is there that the proofs of his existence are to be sought and to be found. As to written or printed books, by whatever name they are called, they are the works of man's hands, and carry no evidence in themselves that God is the author of any of them. It must be in something that man could not make, that we must seek evidence for our belief, and that something is the universe; the true bible; the inimitable word, of God.

“All around us there are tangible evidences of the industrial activity of our people and the growth and development of our State, and with national legislation not unfavorable to us, the future of Oregon is full of promise of a rich inheritance to its inhabitants.”

William Paine Lord (1838–1911) American politician

William Paine Lord (1895). Governor William P. Lord - Inaugural Address, 1895 http://records.sos.state.or.us/ORSOSWebDrawer/Recordpdf/6777841. Oregon State Archives, Oregon Secretary of State. Source: Biennial Report of the Secretary of State of the State of Oregon, Messages and Documents, 1895, Vol. 1, Page 1.

“The common view that internal freedom makes for humane and moral international behavior is supported neither by evidence nor by reason. The United States has a long history of imposing oppressive terrorist regimes in regions of the world within the reach of its power, such as the Caribbean and Central American sugar and banana republics […]. Since World War II, with the great extension of U. S. power, it has borne a heavy responsibility for the spread of a plague of neofascism, state terrorism, torture and repression through large parts of the undeveloped world. The United States has globalized the “banana republic.” This has occurred despite some modest ideological strain because the developments serve the needs of powerful and dominant interests, state and private, within the United States itself.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. 1.

“People will tell us that without the consolations of religion they would be intolerably unhappy. So far as this is true, it is a coward's argument. Nobody but a coward would consciously choose to live in a fool's paradise. When a man suspects his wife of infidelity, he is not thought the better of for shutting his eyes to the evidence. And I cannot see why ignoring evidence should be contemptible in one case and admirable in the other.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"Is There a God?" (1952)
1950s

“Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Arthur Miller147

Related quotes

Related topics