“The inclination to believe in the fantastic may strike some as a failure in logic, or gullibility, but it’s really a gift. A world that might have Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster is clearly superior to one that definitely does not.”

— Chris Van Allsburg

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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US children's writer and illustrator 1949

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“After all, by what lights can you see atheism as a “leap of faith”? What is the “faith” there? Failure to accept gods is no more a leap of faith than is doubting the existence of the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, or Santa Claus. It’s not “faith” when you refuse to accept a proposition for which there’s no evidence.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Self-abasing atheist at the Guardian calls atheism is a “leap of faith” https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/self-abasing-atheist-at-the-guardian-says-that-atheism-is-a-leap-of-faith/" October 29, 2015

“Five billion people could drown in Loch Ness, and no one would show above the surface. It is a big lake. […] As of the 1960s, there were over 9,000 sightings of the Loch Ness Monster. Today, there have been over 11,000 such sightings.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

“Not believing in something is not in itself a belief or a philosophy: it is the 'ism' at the end that tends to cause the trouble. Both atheists and believers can be as arrogant and witless as each other in frustrated debate, and people may choose strong and unapologetic words to raise awareness of the agenda. But despite the name-calling, it is still a fair point that to not believe in God is no more a 'belief in itself' than to not believe in the Loch Ness Monster, Poseidon or anything else one might personally consider far-fetched. Beyond that, there is only how you choose to express yourself.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Tricks of the Mind (2006)

“If you spend your life looking in vain for the Loch Ness Monster, stalking the lake with a camera, sounding it with sonar, and sending submersibles into its depths, and yet still find nothing, what is the more sensible view: to conclude provisionally that the monster simply isn’t there, or to throw up your hands and say, “It might be there; I’m not sure?””

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

Most people would give the first response—unless they’re talking about God.
Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 95

“The truth is that dinosaurs have always lived with man. They were called dragons for most of human history and man killed most of them. In 1841, a new name "dinosaur" was given to them. It is quite possible that a few are still alive. There have been thousands of sightings of creatures, such as the Loch Ness Monster or the dead dinosaur that washed up on the beach in California in 1925.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: Are you being brainwashed?: Propaganda in science textbooks (2007), pp. 22-23

“I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that's extra scary to me. There's a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside. Run, he's fuzzy, get out of here.”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Strategic Grill Locations

“Equally striking is the fact that racial anti-Semitism was not taken seriously even by the great majority of Nazis. ‘It is just a catchword to attract voters’ was a standing phrase which everybody repeated and believed, and that I took it seriously was more than once regarded as definite proof of my stupidity and gullibility.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 17

“We are, if territory and population be looked at together, one of the great countries of the world — a monster country, one might say”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

Around the Cragged Hill : A Personal and Political Philosophy (1994), p. 143
Context: We are, if territory and population be looked at together, one of the great countries of the world — a monster country, one might say, along with others such as China, India, the recent Soviet Union, and Brazil. And there is a real question as to whether "bigness" in a body politic is not an evil in itself, quite aside from the policies pursued in its name.

“Wherever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness, it is a sign of emotional failure”

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

The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell: Contemplation and Action, 1902-1914, ed. Richard A. Rempel, Andrew Brink and Margaret Moran (Routledge, 1993, : Textual Notes, p. 555; also in Laurence J. Peter Quotations for our time (1978), p. 188
Attributed from posthumous publications
Context: Wherever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness, it is a sign of emotional failure: a larger heart, and a greater self-restraint, would put a calm autumnal sadness in the place of the instinctive outcry of pain.

“The more clearly one sees this world; the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.”

John Irving book A Son of the Circus

Source: A Son of the Circus

“The inclination to believe in the fantastic may strike some as a failure in logic, or gullibility, but it’s really a gift. A world that might have Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster is clearly superior to one that definitely does not.”

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