Quotes about evidence
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Helena Roerich photo
Bill Bryson photo
Michael Crichton photo
Michel De Montaigne photo

“I have seen no more evident monstrosity and miracle in the world than myself.”

Book III, Ch. 11
Essais (1595), Book III

Cassandra Clare photo

“No,” said Jace. “I think I’m better than everyone else. An opinion that has been backed up with ample evidence.”

Variant: I think I’m better than everyone else. An opinion that has been backed up with ample evidence.
Source: City of Fallen Angels

Thomas Aquinas photo
Sam Harris photo

“No culture in human history ever suffered because its people became too reasonable or too desirous of having evidence in defense of their core beliefs.”

Sam Harris in * 2006
September
The Temple Of Reason
Bethany
Saltman
The Sun
0744-9666
http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/369/the_temple_of_reason?page=3
2014-05-04
2000s
Source: Letter to a Christian Nation

Bill Bryson photo
Carl Sagan photo

“You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep seated need to believe.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Sometimes attributed to Contact (1985), but the quote does not appear in that book.
It appears attributed to Sagan in Judson Poling's 2003 book "Do Science and the Bible Conflict?", but without source.
Misattributed
Source: Via Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=Ondv5WzhYYYC&pg=PA21&dq=Sagan

Jane Austen photo
Robert Fulghum photo
Sam Harris photo
Robin Hobb photo
John Adams photo

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence…”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1770s, Boston Massacre trial (1770)
Variant: Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
Source: The Portable John Adams

Cornelia Funke photo
Arthur Conan Doyle photo
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Brandon Mull photo
Jerry Seinfeld photo

“A bookstore is one of the only pieces of physical evidence we have that people are still thinking.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Variant: A bookstore is one of the many pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

“Be a positive evidence collector”

Karen Salmansohn American writer

Think Happy: Instant Peptalks to Boost Positivity

Jorge Luis Borges photo
Sam Harris photo
Cassandra Clare photo
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Richard Dawkins photo

“Science replaces private prejudice with publicly verifiable evidence.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Enemies of Reason, "The Irrational Health Service"
The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)

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Matthew Henry photo
Dorothy L. Sayers photo
Siri Hustvedt photo

“Every sickness has an alien quality, a feeling of invasion and loss of control that is evident in the language we use about it.”

Siri Hustvedt (1955) novelist, essayist, poet

Source: The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves

John Maynard Keynes photo
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Susan Elizabeth Phillips photo
Maya Angelou photo
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Meg Cabot photo
Sam Harris photo

“If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural? – William Lane Craig vs. Sam Harris http://www.reasonablefaith.org/is-the-foundation-of-morality-natural-or-supernatural-the-craig-harris, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, United States – April 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk7jHJRSzhM&t=1m10s
2010s

Adam Smith photo
Edward R. Murrow photo

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

The reference to Cassius is that of the character in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. Listen to an mp3 sound file http://www.otr.com/murrow_mccarthy.shtml of parts of this statement.
See It Now (1954)
Context: No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind as between the internal and the external threats of communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." Good night, and good luck.

Mark Z. Danielewski photo
Edward Gorey photo

“I don't know what it is I'm doing. But it's not that. Despite all evidence to the contrary.”

Edward Gorey (1925–2000) American writer, artist, and illustrator

Source: Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey

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Zadie Smith photo
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Scott Lynch photo
Carl Sagan photo

“The extraordinary claims are not supported by extraordinary evidence.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

7 min 25 sec
Back reference to UFO abduction claims
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Encyclopedia Galactica [Episode 12]
Context: For all I know we may be visited by a different extraterrestrial civilization every second Tuesday, but there's no support for this appealing idea. The extraordinary claims are not supported by extraordinary evidence.

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Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo

“Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst
T.S. Eliot photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Bart D. Ehrman photo

“The search for truth takes you where the evidence leads you, even if, at first, you don't want to go there.”

Bart D. Ehrman (1955) American academic

Source: Forged: Writing in the Name of God

Karen Marie Moning photo
Michel Houellebecq photo
Dave Eggers photo
Salman Rushdie photo
Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo

“When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Misattributed
Source: In the Woods

Toni Morrison photo
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Robert Frost photo

“Words are just words. The evidence is in how you act, how you react.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Fever

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George Eliot photo

“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”

Source: Impressions of Theophrastus Such, Ch, 4 (1879); comparable to. James Russell Lowell 1871: Blessed are they who have nothing to say, and who cannot be persuaded to say it. https://books.google.de/books?id=YRmn-_vXZ58C&pg=PA102&dq=persuaded

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Edmund Burke photo

“Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and the invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen, but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule; because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and physical disposition of things, to which man must be obedient by consent or force: but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.”

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

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Mata Amritanandamayi photo

“Evidently, Ted had walked down the block from his own house and entered with the intention of fixing something. Now Ted was broken, too, and beyond repair.”

Part 1, Chapter 7.7; about the death of Travis's landlord, Ted Hockney
Watchers (1987)

“Like proselytization, desecrating and demolishing the temples of non-Muslims is also central to Islam…. India too suffered terribly as thousands of Hindu temples and sacred edifices disappeared in northern India by the time of Sikandar Lodi and Babur. Will Durant rightly laments in the Story of Civilization that "We can never know from looking at India today, what grandeur and beauty it once possessed". In Delhi, after the demolition of twenty-seven Hindu and Jain temples, the materials of which were utilized to construct the Quwwat-ul-Islam masjid, it was after 700 years that the Birla Mandir could be constructed in 1930s. Sita Ram Goel has brought out two excellent volumes on Hindu Temples: What happened to them. These informative volumes give a list of Hindu shrines and their history of destruction in the medieval period on the basis of Muslim evidence itself. This of course does not cover all the shrines razed. Muslims broke temples recklessly. Those held in special veneration by Hindus like the ones at Somnath, Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura, were special targets of Muslims, and whenever the Hindus could manage to rebuild their shrines at these places, they were again destroyed by Muslim rulers. From the time of Mahmud of Ghazni who destroyed the temples at Somnath and Mathura to Babur who struck at Ayodhya to Aurangzeb who razed the temples at Kashi Mathura and Somnath, the story is repeated again and again.”

Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999)