Variant: A bookstore is one of the many pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.
Source: 12 January 2022 https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1481292597511475203
“We in Russia have always considered Russians and Ukrainians to be one people. I still think so.””
Speech at a Moscow concert on the first anniversary of the annexation of the Crimea by the Russian Federation, March 18, 2015.
18 March 2015 speech at a Moscow concert on the first anniversary of the annexation of the Crimea by the Russian Federation
Original: (ru) Мы всегда в России считали, что русские и украинцы – это один народ. Я так думаю и сейчас.
“2004 The Protocols of Zion is still sold in bookstores around the world”
Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.128
Source: The Fabric of Reality (1997), Ch.3
“The best evidence that we are still in a democracy is the fact that there is still an opposition.”
Kap Maceda Aguila, "The Substance of Chiz", People Asia, 2006 June, p. 50, ISSN 0119-657X.
2006
"9th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfoje7jVJpU, Youtube (May 8, 2008)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism
quoted in Larissa MacFarquhar, "Two heads: A marriage devoted to the mind-body problem", The New Yorker (2007)
“In physics we have dealt hitherto only with periodic crystals.”
To a humble physicist's mind, these are very interesting and complicated objects; they constitute one of the most fascinating and complex material structures by which inanimate nature puzzles his wits. Yet, compared with the aperiodic crystal, they are rather plain and dull. The difference in structure is of the same kind as that between an ordinary wallpaper in which the same pattern is repeated again and again in regular periodicity and a masterpiece of embroidery, say a Raphael tapestry, which shows no dull repetition, but an elaborate, coherent, meaningful design traced by the great master.
What Is Life? (1944)
"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!
