Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 4, “Flight” (p. 55)
“If you desire many things, many things will seem but a few.”
Poor Richard's Almanack (1736), http://www.rarebookroom.org/Control/frapos/index.html November
Poor Richard's Almanack
"Last Chance to Think" Interview (2010) by Kylie Sturgess in Skeptical Inquirer. Vol 34 (1)
2000s
Context: The powers of the placebo are so strong that it may be morally wrong to call homeopathy a lie because the moment you say it then a placebo falls to pieces and loses its power. I am a great believer in double-blind random testing, which is the basis of all drug testing. People still insist on things like holistic healing and things that have no real basis in evidence because they want it to be true—it’s as simple as that. If you’re dying of cancer or very, very ill, then you’ll cling to a straw. I feel pretty dark thoughts about the kind of people who throw straws at drowning, dying men and women, and I’m sure most of us would agree it’s a pretty lousy thing to do. Some of these people perhaps believe in the snake oil they sell or allow themselves to believe in it. That’s why James Randi is so good, because he knows what magicians know: if you do a card trick on someone, they will report that it was unbelievable, they describe the effect the magician wanted, and they miss out all the steps in between that seemed irrelevant because the magician made them irrelevant, so they didn’t notice them. People will swear that a clairvoyant mentioned the name of their aunt from nowhere, and they will be astonished if you then play a recording that shows that thirty-two names were said before the aunt’s name, none of which had any effect on them. That’s because they wanted to hear their aunt’s name; they wanted the trick to work, so they forgot all the failures in the same way as people forget all their dreams that have no relevance to their lives, but they mark when they dream of someone they haven’t met for ages that they see the next day. I would be astounded if everyone had coincidences like that—yet people say that is somehow closed-minded of me!
“I want to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible.”
Part Three “The Exiles”, Chapter ii “Walking in the Dark” (p. 123)
(1987), BOOK ONE: IN THE KINGDOM OF THE CUCKOO
“You do realize how many impossible things have to be true for that to have happened?”
Source: 2000s and posthumous publications, A Time Odyssey, Firstborn (2007), Chapter 29, “Alexei” (p. 187)
And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.
"Good and Bad Reasons for Believing" [open letter to his daughter]
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)
“Just because you know a thing is true in theory, doesn't make it true in fact.”
Source: Deathworld (1960), p. 151
Context: Just because you know a thing is true in theory, doesn't make it true in fact. The barbaric religions of primitive worlds hold not a germ of scientific fact, though they claim to explain all. Yet if one of these savages has all the logical ground for his beliefs taken away — he doesn't stop believing. He then calls his mistaken beliefs 'faith' because he knows they are right. And he knows they are right because he has faith. This is an unbreakable circle of false logic that can't be touched. In reality, it is plain mental inertia. A case of thinking 'what always was' will also 'always be.' And not wanting to blast the thinking patterns out of the old rut.
On the lie of growing old gracefully in “Debbie Reynolds interview: movies, failed marriages, and why a woman should be 'like a treasure chest'” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/debbie-reynolds-interview-movies-failed-marriages-woman-should/ in The Telegraph (2016 Dec 29)
