Quotes about proof (849 quotes, page 6)

“Here was irrefutable proof that he was using the Holocaust to speak of the extermination of animal life. Doomed creatures that could not speak for themselves were being given the voice of a most articulate people who had been similarly doomed. He was seeing the tragic fate of animals through the tragic fate of Jews. The Holocaust as allegory.”

Yann Martel (1963) Canadian author best known for the book Life of Pi

Source: Beatrice & Virgil (2010), p. 173

Life , Fate , People , Animals

“He pointed diagonally across the lake with a ski-pole, to where a broad slope of pine trees covered with frost shone golden in the sun.
"Do you know what those black lumps on the branches of that pine are?"
"Aren't they just heath-grouse? Kauko looked in the direction indicated by his brother's ski pole.
"Just heath-grouse!" Auku shouted. "Just heath-grouse! It's a wonder you didn't say just chickadees! You're some hunter, you are. Those are ptarmigan, genuine hook-beaked ptarmigan, and like damned blockheads, we have to be without a gun."
"You're starting to make a habit of cursing." Kauko was a little annoyed at the sharpness of his brother's eyes and was not quite willing to admit that he was right.
"The word 'damn' isn't cursing."
"What is it then? And there's no proof that those are ptarmigan." "Hmh!" Kauko heard a laugh behind him. "We'd be carrying a lot more rabbits and birds back to the house if I did the snaring. "You can't even get a permit to carry a gun yet," said Kauko.
"Who cares about permits? If I can't get a permit to carry a gun, then I'll drag it along behind me. Do you need a permit for that too?" "Don't be smart."”

Kalle Päätalo (1919–2000) Finnish novelist

Kalle Päätalo (1960), Our Daily Bread: A Novel, p. 67

Bird , Tree , Sun , Housing

“An Apple employee copied Sony's design, circulated it to his bosses, and testified to these facts in court. From now on, when anyone heaps phrase on Apple's design excellence and superlative innovation, just point and laugh. Some of us have been saying for years that what Apple is really good at is ripping off other peoples' ideas and stealing the credit for them with slick marketing. This, right here, is the proof.”

Eric S. Raymond (1957) American computer programmer, author, and advocate for the open source movement

The Smartphone Wars: The iPhone Design Was Inspired by Sony http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4479 in Armed and Dangerous (20 July 2012)

People , Idea

“Sin is man’s destruction. Only the rust of sin can consume the soul-or eternally destroy it. For here indeed is the remarkable thing from which already that simple wise man of olden time derived a proof of the immortality of the soul, that the sickness of the soul (sin) is not like bodily sickness which kills the body. Sin is not a passage-way which a man has to pass through once, for from it one shall flee; sin is not (like suffering) the instant, but an eternal fall from the eternal, hence it is not ‘once’, and it cannot possibly be that its ‘once’ is no time. No, just as between the rich man in hell and Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom there was a yawning gulf fixed, so is there also a yawning distinction between suffering and sin. Let us not confuse it, lest talk about suffering might become less frank-hearted, because it had also sin in mind, and this less frank-hearted talk might be boldly impudent inasmuch as it is talking this way about sin. This precisely is the Christian position, that there is this infinite distinction between evil and evil, as they are confusedly named; this precisely is the Christian characteristic, to talk of temporal sufferings ever more and more frank-heartedly, more triumphantly, more joyfully, because Christianity regarded, sin, and sin only, is destructive.”

Sören Kierkegaard book Christian Discourses

Søren Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses, The Joy of it – That We Suffer Only Once But Triumph Eternally. P. 108 Lowrie Translation 1961 Oxford University Press
1840s, Christian Discourses (1848)

Way , Soul , Hell , Suffering

“Many of the visions and revelations handed down as having been given by him are spurious. The miracles ascribed to him are all fabrications of Moslem zealots. He expressly and repeatedly disclaimed all miracles excepting the Koran; which, considering its incomparable merit, and the way in which it had come down to him from heaven, he pronounced the greatest of miracles. And here we must indulge a few observations on this famous document. While zealous Moslems and some of the most learned doctors of the faith draw proofs of its divine origin from the inimitable excellence of its style and composition, and the avowed illiteracy of Mahomet, less devout critics have pronounced it a chaos of beauties and defects; without method or arrangement; full of obscurities, incoherencies, repetitions, false versions of scriptural stories, and direct contradictions. The truth is that the Koran as it now exists is not the same Koran delivered by Mahomet to his disciples, but has undergone many corruptions and interpolations.”

Washington Irving (1783–1859) writer, historian and diplomat from the United States

Mahomet and his successors, George P. Putnam, 1850, p. 330-331.
Mahomet and his successors (1849)

Truth , Faith , Beauty , Way

“The proof of battle is action, proof of words, debate.”

Homér Iliad

XVI. 630 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“1993 California
Los Angeles Times November 28, 1993
“In what observers called an historic ruling, a Russian court has pronounced the infamous ‘’Protocols of Zion’’ an anti-semitic forgey…[It is] the first such verdict in the land where the fraud originated 90 years ago. ‘Up to now, every country has disengaged itself from this shameful book except Russia where it was concocted,’ Tancred Golenpolsky, the publisher of the Moscow Jewish newspaper that won the ruling, said Saturday. The court cast arose 10 months after Golenpolsky’s Jewish Gazette accused the radical nationalist Group Pamyat (Memory) of printing anti-Semitic sentiments…Fostering ethnic conflict is punishable under Russian law.”
Graphic novelist: I’m writing a graphic book that will reveal the true origin of the infamous “Protocols of Zion.” I hope it will alert those who are ignorant of its falsehood!!
Research desk: Haw! Good luck! You’re dealing with an old vampire that will not die in spite of all the absolute proof of fraudulence.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.113

Books , Law , Hope , Angels

“A child’s mind is open to learn, and it is a cruel and heartless thing to fill it with myth disguised as history, to impose upon it a bogus lifelong perspective, and close it up again, leaving it proof against common sense and all argument. Surely, if there is a hell, people who do this are the ones who will get their tickets punched.
A judgment by the God who devised the quantum system should be considerably different from the one the Reverend Koestler envisions. I gave you a sky full of stars, and you never raised your eyes. I gave you a brain, and you never used it.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 12 (p. 113)

God , People , History , Star

“The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. Read over again all the accounts we have of Hindoos, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, we shall find that priests had all the knowledge, and really governed mankind. Examine Mahometanism, trace Christianity from its first promulgation; knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the clergy. And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate [a free inquiry]? The blackest billingsgate, most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes.”

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

XXXI, p. 517. Also quoted in The Political Writings of John Adams (2001) edited by George W. Carey, p. 440 http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0895262924&id=zwKs6Wf2NUEC&pg=PA440&lpg=PA440&ots=qW8I2vCTNZ&dq=%22solemn+truth+in+collision+with+a+dogma+of+a+sect%22&sig=BrWgHvNRAAWcN0rXxdBa7zjeEcc
1810s, Letters to John Taylor (1814)

Truth , Knowledge , Learning , Reading

“It is plain, of course, that any proof of this depends upon the validity of the doctrine of a priori cognition; only by our proved possession of such cognition can there be any evidence that we are self-active realities. It is in this reference noteworthy, therefore, that Lange, as defender of agnosticism, sees he cannot afford to admit the theory upon which alone cognition strictly a priori can be established.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Later German Philosophy, p.175

Reality , Dependency

“To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredón”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

execution wall
As quoted in The Cuban Revolution : Years of Promise (2005) by Teo A. Babun and Victor Andres Triay, p. 57, citing "Che Guevara: Assassin and Bumbler" by Humberto Fontova from Mensnewsdaily.com, 2 March 2004; Fontava does not identify a source for Guevara's statement.
Disputed

Men , Hate , Motivation

“Take heed to carefully consider the words of every soul, then hold fast to the proofs which attest the truth. If ye fail to discover truth in a person’s words, make them not the object of contention, inasmuch as ye have been forbidden in the Bayán to enter into idle disputation and controversy, that perchance on the Day of Resurrection ye may not engage in argumentation, and dispute with Him Whom God shall make manifest.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

XVII, 16
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

God , Truth , Soul , Personality

“A mathematician, then, will be defined in what follows as someone who has published the proof of at least one non-trivial theorem.”

Jean Dieudonné

Mathematics and Mathematicians (1992); published in Is Mathematics Inevitable? A Miscellany (2008), edited by Underwood Dudley, p. 3. ISBN 0883855666

“Where music dwells
Lingering and wandering on as loth to die,
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Part III, No. 43 - Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1821)

Music

“Since fresh examples and proofs could always be found of the alleged relation between guilt and punishment: if you behave in such and such a way, it will go badly with you. Now, as it generally does go badly, the allegation was constantly confirmed; and thus popular morality, a pseudo- science on a level with popular medicine, continually gained ground.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 26 (cf. Daybreak, § 11)

Way , Science

“If the sewing societies, the avails of whose industry are now expended in supporting and educating young men for the ministry, were to withdraw their contributions to these objects, and give them where they are more needed, to their advancement of their own sex in useful learning, the next generation might furnish sufficient proof, that in intelligence and ability to master the whole circle of sciences, woman is not inferior to man.”

Sarah Grimké (1792–1873) American abolitionist

Letter 15 (October 20, 1837).
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1837)

Men , Education , Sex , Intelligence

“The art of concluding from experience and observation consists in evaluating probabilities, in estimating if they are high or numerous enough to constitute proof. This type of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than one might think. It demands a great sagacity generally above the power of common people. The success of charlatans, sorcerors, and alchemists—and all those who abuse public credulity—is founded on errors in this type of calculation.”

Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794) French chemist

Antoine Lavoisier and Benjamin Franklin, Rapport des commissaires chargés par le roi de l'examen du magnétisme animal (Imprimerie royale, 1784), trans. Stephen Jay Gould, "The Chain of Reason versus the Chain of Thumbs", Bully for Brontosaurus (W.W. Norton, 1991), p. 195

People , Art , Error , Thinking

“Quite in vain did several lawyers point out to him that, if justice really existed, there would be no need for law and lawmakers, and thus one of mankind’s noblest conceptions would be obliterated, and an entire occupational group would be thrown out of work. For it is the essence of the law, they told him, that abuses and outrages should exist, since these discrepancies served as proof and validation of the necessity of law, and of justice itself.”

Robert Sheckley book Mindswap

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 6 (pp. 28-29)

Justice , Law

“The very port and gait of a swan, or turkey, or peacock show the high idea he has entertain'd of himself; and his contempt of all others. This is the more remarkable, that in the two last species of animals, the pride always attends the beauty, and is discover'd in the male only. The vanity and emulation of nightingales in singing have been commonly remark'd […] All these are evident proofs, that pride and humility are not merely human passions, but extend themselves over the whole animal creation.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 1, Section 12
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 2: Of the passions

Beauty , Idea , Passion , Singing

“Although "jumping to conclusions" is an expression, rather than an activity, it is as dangerous as jumping off a cliff, jumping in front of a moving train, and jumping for joy. If you jump off a cliff, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful landing unless there is something below you to cushion your fall, such as a body of water or an immense pile of tissue paper. If you jump in front of a moving train, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful voyage unless you are wearing some sort of train-proof suit. And if you jump for joy, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful bump on the head, unless you make sure you are standing someplace with very high ceilings, which joyous people rarely do. Clearly, the solution to anything involving jumping is either to make sure you are jumping to a safe place, or not to jump at all.”

Daniel Handler book The Vile Village

Lemony Snicket
The Vile Village (2001)

Pain , People , Water , Chance

“64. The proof of apatheia is had when the spirit begins to see its own light, when it remains in a state of tranquility in the presence of the images it has during sleep and when it maintains its calm as it beholds the affairs of life.”

Evagrius Ponticus (345–399) Christian monk

The Praktikos

Life , Sleep , Light

“Old people at the supermarket make you wonder about all those middle-aged people you see jogging the streets to preserve their vascular systems for another fifty years.
And about all the people of all ages all over the country who are eating less, drinking less, smoking less, driving safer and in general looking for a death-proof safety suit to get them over the peak years and down into the valley of old age fit to enjoy the fruits of their abstention and labor.
Will anybody care when they get there?
Will they be able to afford an orange?”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"The Aged, Shopping" (p.96)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

Death , People , Age , Drink

“If the man who turnips cries,
Cry not when his father dies,
'Tis a proof that he had rather
Have a turnip than his father.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Source: Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson (1786), p. 67

Cry

“As Oliver Cromwell said to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you might be mistaken." Life and the affairs of the living are so tangled, the world not only stranger than we imagine but stranger than we can imagine, that all questions are conundrums, no answers "correct." Is it certain that parallel lines never meet? No. Does water freeze at 32 degrees Fahrenheit? Only probably. Shall I marry? Who can say? And yet the world's work must be done. One Oblomov is enough. Thus we learn a conventional certitude, acting as though all were light by blinking the shadow. A simple proof demonstrates that parallel lines do meet, but, on the assumption that they do not, the architect builds the skyscraper. Despite his knowledge of statistical mechanics, the engineer designs the refrigerator to maintain a constant temperature of 31 degrees. Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pas [the heart has its reasons that reason does not know], and families are raised.”

Irving Younger (1932–1988) American lawyer

Some of My Life

Life , World , Family , Imagination

“So we have these wide principles which sweep across all the different laws, and if one takes too seriously its derivations, and feels that this is only valid because this [assumed more fundamental principle] is valid, you cannot understand the interconnections of the different branches of physics. Some day, when physics is complete, then maybe with this kind of argument we'll know all the laws, then we can start with some axioms (and no doubt somebody will figure out a particular way of doing it) and then all the deductions will be made. But while we don't know all the laws, we can use some to make guesses at theorems which extend beyond the proof.”

Richard Feynman book The Character of Physical Law

Source: The Character of Physical Law (1965), chapter 2, “The Relation of Mathematics to Physics”

Law , Way , Feeling , Understanding

“Liberalism, which Luxemburg called by its more appropriate name—“opportunism”—is an integral component of capitalism. When the citizens grow restive, it will soften and decry capitalism’s excesses. But capitalism, Luxemburg argued, is an enemy that can never be appeased. Liberal reforms are used to stymie resistance and then later, when things grow quiet, are revoked on the inevitable road to capitalist slavery. The last century of labor struggles in the United States provides a case study for proof of Luxemburg’s observation.The political, cultural and judicial system in a capitalist state is centered around the protection of property rights. And, as Adam Smith pointed out, when civil government “is instituted for the security of property, [it] is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” The capitalist system is gamed from the start. And this makes Luxemburg extremely relevant as corporate capital, now freed from all constraints, reconfigures our global economy, including the United States’, into a ruthless form of neofeudalism.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

"Reform or Revolution" (2016)

Game , Reality , Study

“It is a fascinating story to those who care for their Bible. It is the life-history of the greatest of books, diversified by interesting episodes which appeal to our human sympathies; and we venture to think that the result is reassuring. It may be disturbing to some to part with the conception of a Bible handed down through the ages without alteration and in unchallenged authority; but it is a higher ideal to face the facts, to apply the best powers with which God has endowed us to the solutions of the problems which they present to us; and it reassuring at the end to find that the general result of all these discoveries and all this study is to strengthen the proof of the authenticity of the Scripture, and our conviction that we have in our hands, in substantial integrity, the veritable Word of God.”

Frederic G. Kenyon (1863–1952) British palaeographer and biblical and classical scholar

Source: The Story Of The Bible, Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 144

Life , God , Books , Age

“Discovering that a fraud exists is only the first step. It has to be proved and the proof has to be absolutely watertight.”

Lindsey Davis book A Body in the Bath House

A Body in the Bath House

Fraud

“The method of successive approximations is often applied to proving existence of solutions to various classes of functional equations; moreover, the proof of convergence of these approximations leans on the fact that the equation under study may be majorised by another equation of a simple kind. Similar proofs may be encountered in the theory of infinitely many simultaneous linear equations and in the theory of integral and differential equations. Consideration ofjkbni semiordered spaces and operations between them enables us to easily develop a complete theory of such functional equations in abstract form.”

Leonid Kantorovich (1912–1986) Russian mathematician

"On one class of functional equations" (1936), as cited in: O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., " Leonid Kantorovich http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Kantorovich.html", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews

Study , Success

“Silence is a door among the doors of wisdom - indeed, silence begets and attracts love, it is the proof of all the beneficiences.”

Ali al-Rida (770–818) eighth of the Twelve Imams

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 355.
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General

Love , Wisdom , Silence

“The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine — but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Remark (undated) to William Temple, quoted in Robert Speaight, The Life of Hilaire Belloc (London: Hollis & Carter, 1957), p. 383

“I was interested in achieving a creative freedom, a style that I could express with Seurat's.... color technique [color-divisionism], but shaped to my own needs. Proof that I found it is in my paintings of that period, among which is the famous 'Pan-Pan a Monico' [Severini painted in 1912]. My preference for Neo-Impressionism dates from those works. At times I tried to suppress it, but it always worked its way back to the surface.”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

Source: The Life of a Painter - autobiography', 1946, p. 53; as quoted in: Shannon N. Pritchard, Gino Severini and the symbolist aesthetics of his futurist dance imagery, 1910-1915 https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/pritchard_shannon_n_200305_ma.pdf Diss. uga, 2003.

Color , Way , Freedom , Time

“The great masters of modern analysis are Lagrange, Laplace, and Gauss, who were contemporaries. It is interesting to note the marked contrast in their styles. Lagrange is perfect both in form and matter, he is careful to explain his procedure, and though his arguments are general they are easy to follow. Laplace on the other hand explains nothing, is indifferent to style, and, if satisfied that his results are correct, is content to leave them either with no proof or with a faulty one. Gauss is as exact and elegant as Lagrange, but even more difficult to follow than Laplace, for he removes every trace of the analysis by which he reached his results, and studies to give a proof which while rigorous shall be as concise and synthetical as possible.”

W. W. Rouse Ball (1850–1925) English mathematician

W. W. Rouse Ball, History of Mathematics, (London, 1901), p. 463;

Study , Perfection , Indifference

“In analyzing organization work, a single chart can frequently express more than any amount of detailed written explanation. First of all, clearly define author- ities within your establishment; then chart those authorities simply and graphically, so that every workman knows to whom he is responsible, and every executive knows who is responsible to him. Place this chart conspicuously in every department where each employee can see it. In case of disputed authority, final proof is immediately at hand. There is then no loop-hole through which a neglectful workman, foreman or executive can crawl no longer does he have the excuse that he thought somebody else was going to do it. In clean-cut form, his duties and relations to other men of the organization are laid down once and for all, and responsibility rests on the right man. Failure so to specify responsibilities inevitably means confusion all down the line.”

Clinton Edgar Woods (1863) American engineer

Source: Industrial organization (1914), p. 24-25

Men , Failure

“I have two thoughts [on the question of interviewer Joseph S. Trovato: 'Were the projects a good thing for American art?']. That practically all of the best painters of my generation developed on the projects such as Pollock, de Kooning, Brooks, Hague (sculptor), B. Greene, and Baziotes. I could go on and on. My second thought is that the reason it was good is that it had a broad base due to the economic situation we were in - the depression - and all kinds of art and styles, plus all degrees of talent were employed. Everybody was given an opportunity to prove himself. The many painters I mentioned above who have come such a long way is proof of this.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

n.p.
1961 - 1980, Oral history interview with Philip Guston, 1965 January 29

Art , Way , Question

“Many creationists say that it is impossible to understand or believe the Bible unless it is read “in the spirit of the holy ghost”. In other words, you must already assume its truth before you read it, and you have to read it through filters of faith because it certainly isn’t compelling on its own without those blinders on. If it doesn’t make sense, then you’ve got to convince yourself that you must not understand it properly, and you’ve just got to try to make yourself believe it anyway somehow. That is precisely why creationist faith is deemed ‘dogmatic’. But that’s also proof by admission that even a literal reading must be “interpreted.””

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

So its very design is such that the Bible can not be either inerrant or “absolute truth”.
"3rd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnj7PlqmJ5o, Youtube (December 10, 2007)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Truth , Faith , Understanding , Sense

“Perhaps there is no literature in Europe that mirrors so clearly as the Portuguese, the painful conflict in the minds of people who, on the one hand, by their humanistic education, not only knew better but also more uncritically admired, ancient learning than their medieval predecessors, and, who, on the other hand, in the same epoch, were confronted with abundant proofs of the insufficiency and fallibility of that same Antiquity.”

Reijer Hooykaas (1906–1994) Dutch historian

"The Portuguese Discoveries and the Rise of Modern Science," 1983

Pain , People , Education , Literature

“In the car, President Nixon seemed relaxed and quite flattered by the response of the people. Characteristically he asked me: “Mr President, do people always turn out like this to greet the Indian President or is this because of the President of the United States?” I sensed the comparison. I quietly replied ”Mr President, I would suspect that many youngsters are here to see what a bullet-proof car looks like!””

Mohammad Hidayatullah (1905–1992) 11th Chief Justice of India

He smiled and replied “You have a point there!”.
During the official visit of President Richard Nixon to India, quoted In: P.250.
Law in the Scientific Era

People , Smile , Cars , Sense

“A "new" language that differs from the rest of the crop by one or a couple features is proof positive that both what it came from and what it has become are mutations about to die. There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of such "languages" that people have invented over the years, for all sorts of weird purposes where they just could not use whatever language they were already using, could not extend it, and could not fathom how to modify its tools without making a whole new language. They never stopped to think about how horribly wasteful this is, they just went on to create yet another language called Dodo, the Titanic, Edsel, Kyoto-agreement …”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: Representing code as XML: the Flare Programming Language http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/ecea40eb1602ce7c (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

People , Thinking

“It has been said that science is proof without certainty, where as religion is certainty without proof.”

Varadaraja V. Raman (1932) American physicist

page 305
Truth and Tension in Science and Religion

Religion , Science

“The pure religious consciousness lies in a region which is forever beyond all proof or disproof.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 136

“There were times when Robert actually envied his ancestors, who had lived in dark ignorance, before the twenty-first century, and seemed to have spent most of their time making up weird, ornate explanations of the world to fill the yawning gap of their ignorance. Back then, one could believe in anything at all.
Simple, deliciously elegant explanations of human behavior—it apparently never mattered whether they were true or not, as long as they were incanted right. "Party lines" and wonderful conspiracy theories abounded. You could even believe in your own sainthood if you wanted. Nobody was there to show you, with clear experimental proof, that there was no easy answer, no magic bullet, no philosopher's stone. Only simple, boring sanity.
How narrow the Golden Age looked in retrospect.”

David Brin book The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 53 (pp. 324-325)

Age , World , Behavior , Time

“Not long ago the head of what should be a strictly scientific department in one of the major universities commented on the odd (and ominous) phenomenon that persons who can claim to be scientists on the basis of the technical training that won them the degree of Ph. D. are now found certifying the authenticity of the painted rag that is called the "Turin Shroud" or adducing "scientific" arguments to support hoaxes about the "paranormal" or an antiquated religiosity. "You can hire a scientist [sic]," he said, "to prove anything." He did not adduce himself as proof of his generalization, but he did boast of his cleverness in confining his own research to areas in which the results would not perturb the Establishment or any vociferous gang of shyster-led fanatics. If such is indeed the status of science and scholarship in our darkling age, Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"The Price of the Head", Instauration magazine (March 1980)
1970s, 1980s

Age , Support , Universe , Science

“Cromwell: The King's a man of conscience and he wants either Sir Thomas More to bless his marriage or Sir Thomas More destroyed.
Rich: They seem odd alternatives, Secretary.
Cromwell: Do they? That's because you're not a man of conscience. If the King destroys a man, that's proof to the King that it must have been a bad man, the kind of man a man of conscience ought to destroy — and of course a bad man's blessing's not worth having. So either will do.”

Robert Bolt A Man for All Seasons

Act II
A Man for All Seasons (1960)

Marriage

“No one's keeping track — no one's making of an archive of these "unimportant" things, you know… but now we have an archive … and in a way, the second there's many, it becomes proof of something, something that's so unspecific — that it's — that it's lively — to me that's really alive — that kind of half nauseous, half beautiful feeling.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Pretty Cool People interview (2007)

Beauty , Way , Feeling

“The reference to the source of authority should be definite. Such vague phrases as the following, common though they are, are worthless as proof : —
Statistics gathered with great care show —
It may be said on substantial authority —
Many prominent men agree —
Competent authorities say —
We could give hundreds of cases to show —
Recent writers on this subject declare —
One had better not pretend to prove anything than to seek to cover bare assertions with such flimsy material.”

William Trufant Foster (1879–1950) American economist

Source: Argumentation and debating, 1908, p. 59; as cited in: Branham (2013, p. 77)

Men

“[Progress in psychology depends] upon keeping in mind that general validity of the law and concreteness of the individual case are not antitheses, and that reference to the totality of the concrete whole situation must take the place of reference to the largest possible historical collection of frequent repetitions. This means methodologically that the importance of a case, and its validity as proof, cannot be evaluated by the frequency of its occurrence. Finally, it means for psychology, as it did for physics, a transition from an abstract classificatory procedure to an essentially concrete constructive method.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, A Dynamic Theory of Personality, 1935, p. 42 as cited in: Anthony C. Westerhof (1938) Representative psychologists. p. 48.

Law , Dependency

“Unfortunately, the public is all gaga over the idea of replacing a card swipe with an NFC pass-over using a smartphone. Go ahead and believe that. But if you think it is also hacker-proof, you'll be in for a surprise. It's no safer than using the mattress to stash cash. At some point, you can expect to be robbed blind.”

John C. Dvorak (1952) US journalist and radio broadcaster

Apple Pay: What's the Big Deal? http://pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2470828,00.asp in PC Magazine (22 October 2014)
2010s

Idea , Thinking

“No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Men

“In all cases, wherein the mind feels itself in danger of being confounded by variety, it is sure to rest upon a few strong points, or perhaps upon a single instance. Amongst a multitude of proofs, it is one that does the business. If we observe in any argument, that hardly two minds fix upon the same instance, the diversity of choice shows the strength of the argument, because it shows the number and competition of the examples. There is no subject in which the tendency to dwell upon select or single topics is so usual, because there is no subject, of which, in its full extent, the latitude is so great, as that of natural history applied to the proof of an intelligent Creator.”

William Paley (1743–1805) Christian apologist, natural theologian, utilitarian

Source: Natural Theology (1802), Ch. 27 : Conclusion.

Feeling , History , Intelligence , Business

“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

Stupidity

“General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book One, Chapter III.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book One

Idea

“How nauseating in view of all this to see Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste, reduce this to a game of scrabble... to a matter of finding the right words. We now know that Fianna Fáil ministers see nothing wrong with a Minister for Finance taking large amounts of money for personal use from business interests as long as there is no proof that any specific favours were done.”

Joe Higgins (1949) Irish socialist politician

Irish Independent http://www.independent.ie/national-news/higgins-lashes-nauseating-backtrack-by-pds-71587.html

Money , Game , Business , Personality

“Most mathematics books are filled with finished theorems and polished proofs, and to a surprising extent they ignore the methods used to create mathematics. It is as if you merely walked through a picture gallery and never told how to mix paints, how to compose pictures, or all the other "tricks of the trade."”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)

Books , Mathematics , Painting

“As Commissar for the Armed Forces and a member of the Politburo he [Trotsky] still appeared powerful, but by 1923 he was isolated and helpless. All his former tergiversations were turned against him. When he came to realize his situation he attacked the bureaucratization of the party and the stifling of intra-party democracy: like all overthrown Communist leaders he became a democrat as soon as he was ousted from power. However, it was easy for Stalin and Zinovyev to show not only that Trotsky’ s democratic sentiments and indignation at party bureaucracy were of recent date, but that he himself, when in power, had been a more extreme autocrat than anyone else: he had supported or initiated every move to protect party "unity", had wanted – contrary to Lenin’ s policy – to place the trade unions under state control and to subject the whole economy to the coercive power of the police, and so on. In later years Trotsky claimed that the policy, which he had supported, of prohibiting "fractions" was envisaged as an exceptional measure and not a permanent principle. But there is no proof that this was so, and nothing in the policy itself suggests that it was meant to be temporary. It may be noted that Zinovyev showed more zeal than Stalin in condemning Trotsky – at one stage he was in favour of arresting him – and thus supplied Stalin with useful ammunition when the two ousted leaders tried, belatedly and hopelessly, to join forces against their triumphant rival.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

pg. 21
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume III: The Breakdown

Democracy , Support , Appearance

“Under the shady roof
Of branching elm star-proof.”

John Milton Arcades

Arcades (1630-1634), line 88

Star

“By several proofs experience art has made,
Example being guide.”
Per varios usus artem experientia fecit, Exemplo monstrante viam.

Marcus Manilius Astronomica

Book I, line 61. Quoted by Michel de Montaigne in Essays, Vol. III, Ch. 13 (tr. Charles Cotton).
Variant translation: Experience, after many trials, perfected the art, example showing the way.
Astronomica

Art

“I thank God who has blessed Mysore so abundantly in material ways that He has blessed her also with a sincere, modest, liberal-minded and industrious people; and I thank my people themselves, my Government and my officers that by their hearty co-operation for the good of Mysore they have earned for it the name of the Model State and the signal proof of appreciation which we have just received from the Supreme Government…. And I appeal specially to the rising generation to hold before themselves always the ideal of brotherhood and good citizenship, so that when they come to fill our places, they may continue in all good ways to advance and increase the welfare of our beloved Motherland.”

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (1884–1940) King of Mysore

In his address to the public on the occasion of his Silver Jubilee of his reign. Modern_Mysore, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University, 26 November 2013, archive.org, 347-49 http://archive.org/stream/modernmysore035292mbp/modernmysore035292mbp_djvu.txt,
As ruler of the state

God , People , Way , Sincerity

“[A]t the beginning of November 2001, there was a series of meetings between White House advisers and senior Hollywood executives with the aim of co-ordinating the war effort and establishing how Hollywood could help in the "war against terrorism" by getting the right ideological message across not only to Americans, but also to the Hollywood public around the globe — the ultimate empirical proof that Hollywood does in fact function as an "ideological state apparatus."”

Slavoj Žižek book Welcome to the Desert of the Real

Welcome to the Desert of the Real!: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates (London: Verso, 2002, ISBN 1-859-84421-9), p. 16

War , Effort , Help , Housing

“The art of concluding from experience and observation consists in evaluating probabilities, in estimating if they are high or numerous enough to constitute proof. This type of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than one might think. It demands a great sagacity generally above the power of common people. The success of charlatans, sorcerors, and alchemists — and all those who abuse public credulity — is founded on errors in this type of calculation.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier, Rapport des commissaires chargés par le roi de l'examen du magnétisme animal (1784), as translated in "The Chain of Reason versus the Chain of Thumbs", Bully for Brontosaurus (1991) by Stephen Jay Gould,. p. 195.
Decade unclear

People , Art , Error , Thinking

“I am an anarchist, a political and social Huguenot; I deny everything and affirm naught but myself: because the sole truth of which I have material and moral proof and tangible, comprehensible and intelligible evidence, the only real, startling, non-arbitrary truth not susceptible to interpretation, is myself. I am. There I have a positive fact. Everything else is abstraction and, in mathematics, would be designated as "x", and unknown quantity; and I need not trouble myself with it.”

Anselme Bellegarrigue book Anarchist Manifesto

Anarchist Manifesto (1850)

Truth , Intelligence , Mathematics

“I look at Death Proof and realize I had too much time.”

Quentin Tarantino (1963) American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor

http://web.archive.org/20090520151810/www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/features/interviews_profiles/e3i07c80a70350aca72e68eea8ffc6de060.

Death , Time

“There is presumably a calendar date — a moment — when the onus of proof passed from the atheist to the believer, when, quite suddenly, secretly, the noes had it.”

Tom Stoppard Jumpers

George, Act I
Jumpers (1972)

“And coincidence convinces the credulous. Two things happen at the same time, or one after another, and we assume there must be a link; well, we sacrificed a virgin last year, and there was a good harvest. Of course the ceremony to raise the sun works—it comes up every morning, doesn’t it? I say my prayers each night and the world hasn’t ended yet…
Dung beetle thinking. Life is too complicated for there not to be continual coincidences, and we just have to come to terms with the fact that they merely happen and aren’t ordained, that some things occur for no real reason whatsoever, and that this is not a punishment and that is not a reward. Good grief; the most copper-bottomed, platinum-card proof of divine intervention, of some holy masterplan, would be if there were no coincidences at all! That really would look suspicious.”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

“Piece” (p. 75)
Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991)

Life , World , Thinking , Time

“It is no coincidence that while some major female artists have married, very few have borne children. The issue is not conservation of energy but imaginative integrity. Art is its own self-swelling, proof that the mind is greater than the body.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 660

Children , Art , Imagination

“It must now be added that these attempts at proof not only fail of their purpose, and so do no good to religion, but that they positively degrade it.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 150.

Religion

“North Koreans now understand that South Korea is very rich. It is true, but there is a great difference between vaguely understanding something and having such graphic images of neighbors' prosperity flooding your daily life. As is usually the case, such pictures are liable to be exaggerated at first. An outsider in a rich country usually cannot immediately see the contradictions, problems and tensions that exist behind the sparking, glistening, glitzy facade. For the North Koreans, this picture of the South Korean prosperity would likely be seen as vivid proof of the complete failure of their leadership. The North Korean elite cannot even use the usual trick of putting the blame at the doors of their predecessors: This elite is hereditary, so the buck cannot be easily passed.”

Andrei Lankov (1963) Russian academic

The Folly of an Inter-Korean Confederation (October 2015)

Life , Failure , Understanding , Problem

“First then I will set out the very first theorem which became known to me by means of mechanics, namely that
Any segment of a section of a right angled cone (i. e., a parabola) is four-thirds of the triangle which has the same base and equal height,
and after this I will give each of the other theorems investigated by the same method. Then at the end of the book I will give the geometrical [proofs of the propositions]…”

Archimedes book The Method of Mechanical Theorems

The Method of Mechanical Theorems

Books

“In the course of my inquiries, I met with the work upon the Trinity, by Dr. Samuel Clarke. This I carefully examined, and although very far from being satisfied, I ceased from further inquiry. This change arose probably from my having acquired the much more valuable work of the same author, on the Being and Attributes of God. This I studied, and felt that its doctrine was much more intelligible and satisfactory than that of the former work. I may now state, as the result of a long life spent in studying the works of the Creator, that I am satisfied they afford far more satisfactory and more convincing proofs of the existence of a supreme Being than any evidence transmitted through human testimony can possibly supply.”

Charles Babbage Passages from the life of a philosopher

"Passages from the life of a philosopher", The Athanasian Creed , p. 403
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)

Life , God , Intelligence , Study

“Demanding an “ape-man” is actually just as silly as asking to see a mammal-man, or a half-human, half-vertebrate. How about a half dachshund, half dog? It’s the same thing. One may as well insist on seeing a town half way between Los Angeles and California. Because the problem with bridging the gap between humans and apes is that there is no gap because humans are apes –definitely and definitively. The word, “ape” doesn’t refer to a species, but to a parent category of collective species, and we’re included. This is no arbitrary classification like the creationists use. It was first determined via meticulous physical analysis by Christian scientists a century before Darwin, and has been confirmed in recent years with new revelations in genetics. Furthermore, it is impossible to define all the characters exclusively indicative of every known member of the family of apes without describing our own genera as one among them. Consequently, we can and have proven that humans are apes in exactly the same way that lions are cats, and iguanas are lizards, and whales are mammals. So where is the proof that humans descend from apes? How about the fact that we’re still apes right now!”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"9th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfoje7jVJpU, Youtube (May 8, 2008)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Family , Dogs , Angels , Way

“For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the proof is in the idiocy of all the different units which they use for measuring energy.”

Richard Feynman book The Character of Physical Law

Source: The Character of Physical Law (1965), chapter 3, “The Great Conservation Principles,” p. 75

“After so many great men have worked on this subject, I almost do not dare to say that I have discovered the universal principle upon which all these laws are based, a principle that covers both elastic and inelastic collisions and describes the motion and equilibrium of all material bodies.
This is the principle of least action, a principle so wise and so worthy of the supreme Being, and intrinsic to all natural phenomena; one observes it at work not only in every change, but also in every constancy that Nature exhibits. In the collision of bodies, motion is distributed such that the quantity of action is as small as possible, given that the collision occurs. At equilibrium, the bodies are arranged such that, if they were to undergo a small movement, the quantity of action would be smallest.
The laws of motion and equilibrium derived from this principle are exactly those observed in Nature. We may admire the applications of this principle in all phenomena: the movement of animals, the growth of plants, the revolutions of the planets, all are consequences of this principle. The spectacle of the universe seems all the more grand and beautiful and worthy of its Author, when one considers that it is all derived from a small number of laws laid down most wisely. Only thus can we gain a fitting idea of the power and wisdom of the supreme Being, not from some small part of creation for which we know neither the construction, usage, nor its relationship to other parts. What satisfaction for the human spirit in contemplating these laws of motion and equilibrium for all bodies in the universe, and in finding within them proof of the existence of Him who governs the universe!”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Les Loix du Mouvement et du Repos, déduites d'un Principe Métaphysique (1746)

Wisdom , Men , Law , Beauty

“That the variations are controlled by physiological law, we have now experimental proof; but that this control is guided ever so little in response to the needs of adaptation there is not the smallest sign.”

William Bateson (1861–1926) British geneticist and biologist

Source: Mendel's Principles of Heredity (1913), Chapter XV, p. 289.

Law

“To say that the activity of science and art helps humanity's progress, if by that activity we mean the activity which now calls itself by those names, is as though one said that the clumsy, obstructive splashing of oars in a boat moving down stream assists the boat's progress. It only hinders it… The proof of this is seen in the confession made by men of science that the achievements of the arts and sciences are inaccessible to the labouring masses on account of the unequal distribution of wealth.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What then must we do? (1886)

Men , Art , Science , Help

“"I consider this Negro [Benjamin Banneker] as fresh proof that the powers of the mind are disconnected with the colour of the skin or in other words, a striking contradiction to Mr. Hume's doctrine that "the Negroes are naturally inferior to the whites and unsusceptible of attainments in arts and sciences.""”

James McHenry

https://archive.org/details/ERIC_ED069838
http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1215&context=theses
https://books.google.com/books?id=ny-UAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA116

Art , Nature , Science

“I have discovered in the Hebrew Bible teachings of righteousness, humaneness, and human dignity—at the source of my parents' teachings of mentschlichkeit—undreamt of in my prior philosophizing. In the idea that human beings are equally God-like, equally created in the image of the divine, I have seen the core principle of a humanistic and democratic politics, respectful of each and every human being, and a necessary correction to the uninstructed human penchant for worshiping brute nature or venerating mighty or clever men. In the Sabbath injunction to desist regularly from work and the flux of getting and spending, I have discovered an invitation to each human being, no matter how lowly, to step outside of time, in imitatio Dei, to contemplate the beauty of the world and to feel gratitude for its—and our—existence. In the injunction to honor your father and your mother, I have seen the foundation of a dignified family life, for each of us the nursery of our humanization and the first vehicle of cultural transmission. I have satisfied myself that there is no conflict between the Bible, rightly read, and modern science, and that the account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis offers "not words of information but words of appreciation," as Abraham Joshua Heschel put it: "not a description of how the world came into being but a song about the glory of the world's having come into being"—the recognition of which glory, I would add, is ample proof of the text's claim that we human beings stand highest among the creatures. And thanks to my Biblical studies, I have been moved to new attitudes of gratitude, awe, and attention. For just as the world as created is a world summoned into existence under command, so to be a human being in that world—to be a mentsch—is to live in search of our summons. It is to recognize that we are here not by choice or on account of merit, but as an undeserved gift from powers not at our disposal. It is to feel the need to justify that gift, to make something out of our indebtedness for the opportunity of existence. It is to stand in the world not only in awe of its and our existence but under an obligation to answer a call to a worthy life, a life that does honor to the special powers and possibilities—the divine-likeness—with which our otherwise animal existence has been, no thanks to us, endowed.”

Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic

Looking for an Honest Man (2009)

Life , Men , God , World

“There was life out there. They had proof of it now. And the proof came in the shape of a weapon, so what did that tell him?”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 38 (p. 379)

Life

““This is today’s puzzle,” he said. “If the act of denial can be taken as proof of the crime, how can an innocent man defend himself?”
The tithingmen caught him by the arms. “Come along now, Mr. Emerson, and don’t go trying any philosophy on us.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Waldo. “Philosophy would be wasted against such sturdy-headed men as you.”
“Glad you know it,” said the tithingman proudly. “Wouldn’t want you thinking we weren’t true Christians.””

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 9.

Men , Dreams , Thinking

“Proof must be solid break walls of facts.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

(1945)

“Indeed, proof that a given condition always precedes or accompanies a phenomenon does not warrant concluding with certainty that a given condition is the immediate cause of that phenomenon. It must still be established that when this condition is removed, the phenomen will no longer appear.”

Claude Bernard (1813–1878) French physiologist

Introduction à l'Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale (1865)

Appearance

“Young man, you’re living proof that our basic policy is right. I wouldn’t trust an ignoramus like you with the information required to cut his throat.”

Algis Budrys (1931–2008) American writer

The End of Summer, p. 23
The Unexpected Dimension (1960)

“When you're the most powerful entity in the world, as the US government certainly is—the only government to have dropped nuclear bombs on civilian populations ('good' bombs, because dropped by the US)—you get to manufacture your own parallel universe with its unique rules of evidence and standards of proof. What's more, as the mightiest rule-maker, you can coerce other earthlings into 'sharing' your alternate reality. Or else.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" Beware The Atavistic Dynamics Undergirding Two American Wars, https://misesuk.org/2017/06/21/beware-the-atavistic-dynamics-undergirding-two-american-wars/" The Ludwig von Mises Centre For Property and Freedom, June 21, 2017.
2010s, 2017

World , Reality , Universe

“(1) If a convicted man has the money to pay the docket fee and for a transcript of the proceedings at his trial, the upper federal court, by at least reading the transcript, will ascertain whether or not there was reversible error at the trial, or whether or not there was such a lack of evidence that the defendant is entitled to a new trial or a dismissal of the indictment.
(2) If, however, the defendant is so destitute that he cannot pay the docket fee, and if the trial judge has signed a certificate of 'bad faith,' then although a reading of the transcript shows clear reversible errors, the federal appellate court is powerless to hear the appeal and thus to rectify the errors; and even if the defendant has money enough to pay the docket fee but not enough for a transcript, the upper court usually has no way of determining whether there were such errors, must therefore assume there were none, and must accordingly refuse to consider his appeal. As a consequence, a poor man erroneously convicted-- e. g., where there was insufficient proof of his guilt--must go to prison and stay there. In such a situation-- i. e., where the upper court, if it had the transcript before it, would surely reverse for insufficiency of the evidence or on some other ground, but cannot do so solely because the defendant cannot pay for a transcript-- the result is this: He is punished because he is guilty of the crime of being poor”

Jerome Frank (1889–1957) American jurist

more or less on the principle, openly avowed in Erewhon only, that one who suffers misfortunes deserves criminal punishment
United States v. Johnson, 238 F.2d 565, 568 (1956) (dissenting).

Money , Faith , Way , Error

“There is a rhetoric of knowledge, a characteristic way in which arguments, proofs, speculations, experiments, polemics, even humor are expressed. …speaking or writing a subject is a performing art, and each subject requires a somewhat different kind of performance from every other. Historians, for example, do not speak or write history in the same way biologists speak or write biology. …it is worth remembering that some scholars-one thinks of Veblen in sociology, Freud in psychology, Galbraith in economics - have exerted influence as much through their manner as their matter. The point is that knowledge is a form of literature, and the various styles of knowledge ought to be studied and discussed.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)

Art , Way , History , Literature

“Sacrifice has always been regarded as the most convincing proof of loyalty; and its most common form involves a foregoing of the use of some organic function, as in the case of celibacy or fasting. Of at least equal significance, however, is a sacrifice of the use of reason - credo quia impossibile - and the more incredible the assertion, the stronger the proof of the devotion manifested by its acceptance. The Catholic theologians are quite explicit about this, and openly say that by affirming what to the human reason appears absurd, a believer proves his love for God. Although they are never so frank about it, the secular sects make similar demands.”

Stanislav Andreski (1919–2007) Polish-British sociologist

Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972)

Love , God , Appearance , Loyalty

“While no rigorous proof of an optimal strategy has been achieved, Robbins has proposed the principal of "staying on a winner" and has shown it to be uniformly better than a strategy of random selection.”

Richard Arnold Epstein (1927) American physicist

Source: The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic (Revised Edition) 1977, Chapter Four, Coins, Wheels, And Oddments, p. 98

Optimism

“Is it true, then, that unless there had been a separation from the North, slavery would be abolished in Georgia? I address myself to the proofs of that case.”

Henry L. Benning (1814–1875) Confederate Army general

Speech to the Virginia Convention (1861)

“The ultimate end of education is not a perfection in the accomplishments of the school, but fitness for life; not the acquirement of habits of blind obedience, and of prescribed diligence, but a preparation for independent action. We must bear in mind that whatever class of society a pupil may belong to, whatever calling he may be intended for, there are certain faculties in human nature common to all, which constitute the stock of the fundamental energies of man. We have no right to withhold from any one the opportunities for developing all their faculties. It may be judicious to treat some of them with marked attention, and to give up the idea of bringing others to high perfection. The diversity of talent and inclination, of plans and pursuits, is a sufficient proof of the necessity for such a distinction. But I repeat that we have no right to shut out the child from the development of those faculties also, which we may not for the present conceive to be very essential for his future calling or station in life.”

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer

Letters on Infants' Education (1819)

Life , Education , School , Idea

“The large benefits which the divine liberality is constantly bestowing on the wicked are preparing them for heavier judgment. As they neither think that these proceed from the hand of the Lord, nor acknowledge them as his, or if they do so acknowledge them, never regard them as proofs of his favor, they are in no respect more instructed thereby in his mercy than brute beasts, which, according to their condition, enjoy the same liberality, and yet never look beyond it.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 3, Chapter 2, Section 32, p. 484
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Thinking

“The rapid establishment of Christianity must therefore have been from the conviction which those who embraced it, had of its "Truth and power unto salvation." Christianity at first spread itself amongst the most enlightened nations of the earth - in those places where human learning was in its greatest perfection; and, by the force of the evidence which attended it, amongst such men it gained an establishment. It has been justly observed, that "it happened very providentially to the honour of the Christian religion, that it did not take its rise in the dark illiterate ages of the world, but at a time when arts and sciences were t their height, and when there were men who made it the business of their lives to search after truth and lift the several opinions of the philosophers and wise men, concerning the duty, the end, and chief happiness of reasonable creatures." Both the learned and the ignorant alike embraced its doctrines; the learned were not likely to be deceived in the proofs which were offered; and the same cause undoubtedly operated to produce the effect upon each. But an immediate conversion of the bulk of mankind, can arise only from some proofs of a ddivine authority offering themselves immediately to the senses; the preaching of any new doctrine, if lest to operate only by its own force, would go but a very little way towards the immediate conversion of the gnorant, who have no principle of action but what arises from habit, and whose powers of reasoning are insufficient to correct their errors. When Mahomet was required by his followers to work a miracle for their conviction, he always declined it; he was too cautious to trust to an experiment, the success of which was scarcely whithin the bounds of probablity; he amused his followers with prtended visions, which with the aid afterwards of the civil and military powr; and as the accomplishment of that event was by a few obscure persons, who founded their pretentions upon authority from heaven, we are next to consider, what kind of proofs of their divine commission they offered to the world; and whether they themselves could have been deceived, or mankind could have been deludded by them.”

Samuel Vince (1749–1821) British mathematician, astronomer and physicist

Source: The Credibility of Christianity Vindicated, p. 20; As quoted in " Book review http://books.google.nl/books?id=52tAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA261," in The British Critic, Volume 12 (1798). F. and C. Rivington. p. 261-262

Men , Truth , Age , World

“I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

As quoted in Jesus : Myth Or Reality? (2006) by Ian Curtis, p. 289.
Date unknown

Life , God , Idea , Hell

“In our modern world, we look unkindly on mistakes and imperfection. But this is far from the samurai ideal. Mistakes are part of the learning process and if you haven't made them then you are, indeed, dangerous because it means you have never learned anything. Mistakes, to a samurai, are the proof of your learning.”

Alexei Maxim Russell (1976) Canadian writer

from Instruction Manual for the 21st Century Samurai.

World , Learning , Parting

“It has been fashionable in the twentieth century not only to debunk myth, … but to pretend that that reasonable and educated people could avoid the embarrassment of religion and the risk of metaphysics by sticking close to demonstrable facts and testable hypotheses. However, in the course of reducing our beliefs and hopes to certainties and proofs, we impoverished and deluded ourselves. The modern anti-myth reduced human life to a story without a point, a tale told by an idiot, a process without a purpose, a journey without a goal, an affair without a climax (Godot never comes), an accidental collision of mindless atoms. … We have hardly noticed that economics, technology and politics have become the new myth and metaphysic. We haven’t avoided myth and metaphysics, only created demeaning ones.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 22

Life , People , Education , Religion

“I, too, have made a wee-little book from the same materials, which I call the Philosophy of Jesus; it is a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book, and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw. They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not recognize one feature.”

Thomas Jefferson book Jefferson Bible

Letter to Charles Thomson (9 January 1816), on his The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JefJesu.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all (the "Jefferson Bible"), which omits all Biblical passages asserting Jesus' virgin birth, miracles, divinity, and resurrection. Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 11 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-11_Bk.pdf, pp. 498–499
1810s

Books , Beauty , Time , Drawing

“As I write, it is not yet clear who has won the presidential election. Win or lose, though, Mr Obama was not and is not the president. The Hawaiian long-form "birth certificate" he publicly endorsed and posted at the White House website last year as proof that he was born in the jurisdiction of the U. S. and is thus constitutionally eligible to be president is a forgery.”

Christopher Monckton (1952) British public speaker and hereditary peer

Win or lose, Obama was not and is not the president http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/win-or-lose-obama-was-not-and-is-not-the-president/ WorldNetDaily, November 6, 2012.

Birth , Housing

“It is not to the force or validity of the argument that I object, but to the misinterpretation of its scope. It is a clinching dialectical thumbscrew for the torture of agnostics; yes, with reference to them and their very lawful stadium of thinking, it is even a step of value in the struggle of the soul toward a conviction of its really infinite powers and prospects; but I cannot see in it any full proof of the real being of God. Strictly construed, it is, as I have just endeavoured to show, simply the vindication of that active sovereign judgment which is the light of every mind, which organises even the most elementary perceptions, and which goes on in its ceaseless critical work of reorganisation after reorganisation, building all the successive stages of science, and finally mastering those ultimate implications of science that constitute the insights of philosophy.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The City of God and the True God as its Head (In Royce’s “The Conception of God: a Philosophical Discussion Concerning the Nature of the Divine Idea as a Demonstrable Reality”), p.111

God , Law , Soul , Thinking