“Do not speculate, Sedenko, on things for which no evidence exists. You will waste your time.”
Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 9 (p. 103)
“Do not open that which is not evidence.”
1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 505.
King v. Knowles (1820)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "Do not open that which is not evidence." by Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet?
Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet 21
British judge 1763–1841Related quotes
Kanan Makiya
(1949) American orientalist
"Kanan Makiya speaks about Iraq 5 years later...", Washington Post (March 20, 2008)
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
Christopher Hitchens
(1949–2011) British American author and journalist
2000s, 2003
Variant: "What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof." in
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." appears by itself in God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007).
Translation of the Latin phrase "Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.".
Variant: What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.
Source: god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Context: Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
“Do I open it? Do I open it? Of course I freaking open it!”
James Patterson
(1947) American author
Source: Fang
Bertrand Russell
(1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Source: 1950s, Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954), p. 215
Source: Terminal World (2010), Chapter 22 (p. 405)
Henry Ward Beecher
(1813–1887) American clergyman and activist
The Nature, Importance and Liberties of Belief (1873)
Context: Now, evidence to a man is that which convinces his mind. It varies with different men. An argument to a man who cannot reason is no evidence. Facts are no evidence to a man who cannot perceive them. A sentimental appeal is evidence to a man whose very nature moves by emotion, though it may not be to his neighbor.
So then, when men come to the investigation of truth, they are responsible, first, for research, for honesty therein, for being diligent, and for attempting to cleanse their minds from all bias of selfishness and pride. They are responsible for sincerity and faithfulness in the investigation of truth. And when they go beyond that to the use of their faculties, the combination of those faculties will determine very largely, not, perhaps, the generic nature of truth, but specific developments of it. And as long as the world stands there will be men who will hold that God is a God of infinite love and sympathy and. goodness with a residunm of justice; and there will be men who will believe that God is a God of justice with a residunm of love and sympathy and goodness; and each will follow the law of his own mind. As a magnet, drawn through a vessel containing sand and particles of iron, attracts the particles of iron but does not attract the sand; so the faculties of a man's mind appropriate certain facts and reject others. What is evidence to a man will depend upon those of his faculties whk at work upon the things which are presented as evidence.