“As it is natural to believe many things without proof, so, despite all proof, is it natural to disbelieve others.”

— Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 184.

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Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues60

French writer, a moralist 1715–1747

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 35.

“The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof.”

Ashley Montagu (1905–1999) British-American anthropologist

The second sentence is often misquoted as “Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.” or “Religion gives us certainty without proof; science gives us proof without certainty.”
Context: Bigotry and science can have no communication with each other, for science begins where bigotry and absolute certainty end. The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof. Let us never forget that tyranny most often springs from a fanatical faith in the absoluteness of one’s beliefs.

“All nature abounds in proofs of other influences than merely mechanical action, even in the physical world.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

Lecture II : The Universal Categories, §3. Laws: Nominalism, CP 5.65
Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1903)
Context: All nature abounds in proofs of other influences than merely mechanical action, even in the physical world. They crowd in upon us at the rate of several every minute. And my observation of men has led me to this little generalization. Speaking only of men who really think for themselves and not of mere reporters, I have not found that it is the men whose lives are mostly passed within the four walls of a physical laboratory who are most inclined to be satisfied with a purely mechanical metaphysics. On the contrary, the more clearly they understand how physical forces work the more incredible it seems to them that such action should explain what happens out of doors. A larger proportion of materialists and agnostics is to be found among the thinking physiologists and other naturalists, and the largest proportion of all among those who derive their ideas of physical science from reading popular books.

“Art is a demonstration of which nature is the proof.”

George Sand (1804–1876) French novelist and memoirist; pseudonym of Lucile Aurore Dupin

L'art est une démonstration dont la nature est la preuve.
François le Champi, Introduction (1848); Jane Minot Sedgwick (trans.) François the Waif {New York: H. M. Caldwell, 1894) p. 17

“An apparent contradiction of a natural law is only the rarely occurring proof of another natural law.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Ein scheinbarer Widerspruch gegen ein Naturgesetz ist nur die selten vorkommende Betätigung eines andern Naturgesetzes.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 36.