Convincing Evidence Quotes

#1. GUNPOWDER, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted. By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence. Milton says it was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels. #Quote by Ambrose Bierce

#2. Amending the U.S. Constitution, the document most sacred to those who love freedom and liberty, is a delicate endeavor and should be done only on the basis of the most clear and convincing evidence that a proposed amendment is necessary. #Quote by Ben Nelson

#3. I have long been something of a climate-change sceptic, but my views in recent years have shifted. For me, the most convincing evidence that something worrying is going on lies right here in the Arctic. #Quote by Michael Hanlon

#4. There is convincing evidence that the search for solitude is not a luxury but a biological need. Just as humans posses a herding instinct that keeps us close to others most of the time, we also have a conflicting drive to seek out solitude. If the distance between ourselves and others becomes too great, we experience isolation and alienation, yet if the proximity to others becomes too close, we feel smothered and trapped. #Quote by Bill Vaughan

#5. After 1980, you never heard reference to space again. Surface, the most convincing evidence of the descent into materialism, became the focus of design. Space disappeared. #Quote by Arthur Erickson

#6. Nutritionists don't stop there, because they can't: they have to manufacture complication, to justify the existence of their profession. These new nutritionists have a major commercial problem with the evidence. There's nothing very professional or proprietary about 'Eat your greens,' so they have had to push things further. But unfortunately for them, the technical, confusing, overcomplicated, tinkering interventions that they promote - the enzymes, the exotic berries - are very frequently not supported by convincing evidence. #Quote by Ben Goldacre

#7. Christian apologists who argue that a story about an empty tomb is convincing evidence of a resurrected body are likely unfamiliar with Occam's razor, which states that among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected. They assume that the most likely explanation is miraculous resurrection through some unproven divine connection, but more likely scenarios include a stolen body, a mismarked grave, a planned removal, faulty reports, creative storytelling, edited scriptures, etc. No magic required. #Quote by David G. McAfee

#8. The entire hominid collection known today would barely cover a billiard table, ... the collection is so tantalizingly incomplete, and the specimens themselves often so fragmented and inconclusive, that more can be said about what is missing than about what is present ... but ever since Darwin's work inspired the notion that fossils linking modern man and extinct ancestor would provide the most convincing proof of human evolution, preconceptions have led evidence by the nose in the study of fossil man. #Quote by John Reader

#9. It is one thing to impose drastic measures and harsh economic penalties when an environmental problem is clear-cut and severe ... It is foolish to do so when the problem is largely hypothetical and not substantiated by observations ... we do not currently have any convincing evidence or observations of significant climate change from other than natural causes. #Quote by Frederick Seitz

#10. Wherever sufficiently numerous series of the remains of any given group, which has endured for a long space of time, are carefully examined, their morphological relations are never in discordance with the requirements of the doctrine of evolution, and often afford convincing evidence of it. At the same time, it has been shown that certain forms persist with very little change, from the oldest to the newest fossiliferous formations; and thus show that progressive development is a contingent, and not a necessary result, of the nature of living matter. #Quote by Thomas Henry Huxley

#11. The greatest threat of childhood diseases lies in the dangerous and ineffectual efforts made to prevent them through mass immunisation ... There is no convincing scientific evidence that mass inoculations can be credited with eliminating any childhood disease. #Quote by Robert S. Mendelsohn

#12. Looking more closely at Earth's atmospheric fingerprints, human biomarkers will also include sulfuric, carbonic, and nitric acids, and other components of smog from the burning of fossil fuels. If the curious aliens happen to be socially, culturally, and technologically more advanced than we are, then they will surely interpret these biomarkers as convincing evidence for the absence of intelligent life on Earth. #Quote by Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#13. It is a fascinating fact that father and son have given the most striking evidence for the apparently contradictory properties of the electron: the father proving its character as a particle, the son its character as a wave ... Thomson was extremely proud of his son's success and tried to assimilate the new results into his old convictions. #Quote by Max Born

#14. Pictures! Pictures! Pictures! Often, before I learned, did I wonder whence came the multitudes of pictures that thronged my dreams; for they were pictures the like of which I had never seen in real wake-a-day life. They tormented my childhood, making of my dreams a procession of nightmares and a little later convincing me that I was different from my kind, a creature unnatural and accursed. #Quote by Jack London

#15. There's magic all around us: Our smartphones are magical, 3-D printers are magical. So I feel that as a magician, if I can pull off something that seems real and convincing enough that I can explain why it's happening and have people believe it, it really is fascinating. And funny. #Quote by Michael Carbonaro

#16. I saw leaving any situation where I was treated with disrespect as evidence of my courage. I wanted my daughters to learn that lesson of worth from me. #Quote by Carine McCandless

#17. There's evidence of a social decline in direct proportion to technology and the industrialization of the motion picture industry. #Quote by Mark Rydell

#18. It was fun for me also to point out that this brand of young-Earth creationism claims that kangaroos came from a huge ship, the ark, which is supposed to have safely run aground on Mount Ararat in modern-day Turkey. It's a respectable peak - 5,165 meters (almost 17,000 feet) - and it's snowcapped. It's not clear to me how all the animals and humans made the arduous descent. The kangaroos, both of them, are supposed to have made it down the mountain, ran or hopped from there to Australia - and no one saw them. Furthermore, if they took a reasonable amount of time to make the trip, you'd expect some kangaroo pups or joeys to have been born and some adults to have died along the way. You'd expect some kangaroo fossils out there somewhere in what is now Laos or Tibet. Also, they are supposed to have run across a land bridge from Eurasia to Australia. But there's no evidence of such a bridge or any kangaroo fossils in that area, not any. #Quote by Bill Nye

#19. He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival, the cats who teach their kittens to hunt, the birds who spend such strident effort on teaching their fledglings to fly – yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child's education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think.

From the first catch-phrases flung at a child to the last, it is like a series of shocks to freeze his motor, to undercut the power of his consciousness. "Don't ask so many questions, children should be seen and not heard!" – "Who are you to think? It's so, because I say so!" – "Don't argue, obey!" – "Don't try to understand, believe!" – "Don't struggle, compromise!" – "Your heart is more important than your mind!" – "Who are you to know? Your parents know best!" – "Who are you to know? The bureaucrats know best!" – "Who are you to object? All values are relative!" – "Who are you to want to escape a thug's bullet? That's only a personal prejudice!"

Men would shudder, he thought, if they saw a mother bird plucking the feathers from the wings of her young, then pushing him out of the nest to struggle for survival – yet that was what they did to their children. #Quote by Ayn Rand

#20. Oh yeah, I believe in God. I think there's much more evidence that there is a God than that there isn't. I don't believe that Mother Theresa and Hitler go to the same place. #Quote by David Zucker

#21. I now understand why you're determined to thwart her," Maria went on. "She does have a hateful side."
He stared down into the goblet. "I suppose you'd see it that way. She sees it as protective."
"Yet you're angry at her."
"Oh, for God's sake, will you stop harping on that? I'm not angry at Gran." He stepped closer to her. "And if you intend to stand out here all night and plague me with questions about it, I'll give you something better to do with your mouth."
She gazed up at him, perplexed. "I don't under-"
He cut her off with a kiss. Let her knee him in the groin. Let her slap him. Anything was better than having her ask him about things he didn't want to discuss. Ever.
But she didn't kick him. She stayed very, very still, but she didn't fight him.
He drew back to eye her suspiciously. "Well? Aren't you going to punch me in the kidney? Pull a knife on me?"
A smile curved her lips. "You'd like that, wouldn't you? I kick your shin and march off in a huff, and you don't have to answer me. But I'm wise to your tricks now, Oliver. I'm not going to stop asking just because-"
He kissed her again, dropping the goblet so he could drag her close and take advantage of her gasp to plunge his tongue into her mouth. Her sweet, silky mouth. So warm and innocent.
So dangerous.
Swiftly, he retreated.
She did not. "What was that…you just did?" she asked in a breathless voice.
Such clear evidence of her arousal made something r #Quote by Sabrina Jeffries

#22. I wonder if that's how darkness wins, by convincing us to trap it inside ourselves, instead of emptying it out.
I don't want it to win. #Quote by Jasmine Warga

#23. Variable behaviour of the sun is an obvious explanation, and there is increasing evidence that Earth's climate responds to changing patterns of solarmagnetic activity ... If you look back into the sun's past, you find that we live in a period of abnormally high solar activity ... It's a boom-bust system, and I would expect a crash soon ... Having a crash would certainly allow us to pin down the sun's true level of influence on the Earth's climate. Then we will be able to act on fact, rather than from fear. #Quote by Nigel Weiss

#24. Jesus," Kiernan said as he stepped from the Bronco and a gust of frigid wind lifted his hair. "I think my testicles just climbed up into my abdominal cavity in fear."
Matt chuckled. "Lovely visual." He cautiously joined him on the icy sidewalk. "They'll come back out of hiding as soon as you warm up."
"So you say. The poor things aren't used to this kind of weather. It's traumatizing. I'm going to expect you to check later to make sure they're still where they belong."
"I can certainly make an inspection of the general area. I'm a detective. It's all about gathering evidence. #Quote by Diana Copland

#25. As one half of our nature seeks to create heroes to worship, the other must ceaselessly attempt to cast them down and discover evidence of feet-of-clay, in order to label them as mere lucky fellows, or as villains-were-the-facts-but-known, and the eminent and great are ground between the millstones of envy, and reduced again to common size. #Quote by Oakley Hall

#26. When our children were very small, I started to write down a few things about what happened every day….I wrote down a few lines every day for years. I never missed a day no matter how tired I was or how early I would have to start the next day. Before I would write, I would ponder this question: "Have I seen the hand of God reaching out to touch us or our children or our family today?" As I kept at it, something began to happen. As I would cast my mind over the day, I would see evidence of what God had done for one of us that I had not recognized in the busy moments of the day.'

I would suggest that you keep a paper and pencil you your side as you read this book, particularly the stories and examples shared here. I am confident that as you read the stories of others, you will be reminded of times in your life when the Lord has given you special blessings. Or perhaps thoughts will come that will teach you what to do to have your own tender mercies. Write them down, and, if appropriate, share them with your families. #Quote by Henry B. Eyring

#27. If the argument is, "Well, that was all part of the plan," then I have to ask: How can you take the lack of evidence of a plan as evidence of a plan? That makes no sense. #Quote by Bill Nye

#28. Faith accepts the Bible as the word and will of God and rests upon its truth without question and without other evidence. #Quote by Edward McKendree Bounds

#29. Poetry, I thought then, and still do, is a matter of space on the page interrupted by a few well-chosen words, to give them importance. Prose is a less grand affair which has to stretch to the edges of the page to be convincing. #Quote by Fay Weldon

#30. Genetic modification has many different areas, for example in medicine, and Britain is at the leading edge of this new technology. I don't know, but people tell me, it could indeed by the leading science of the 21st century. All I say to people is: 'Just keep an open mind and let us proceed according to genuine scientific evidence.' #Quote by Tony Blair

#31. Emma convinced herself she'd lost him because she was fast. She was also adept at convincing herself of things that might not be - good at pretending. She could pretend she took classes at night by choice, and that blushing didn't make her thirsty
A vicious growl sounded. Her eyes widened, but she didn't turn back, just sprinted across the field. She felt claws sink into her anckle a second before she was dragged to the muddy ground and thrown onto her back. A hand covered her mouth, though she'd been trained not to scream.
"Never run from one such as me." Her attacker didn't sound human. "You will no' get away. And we like it." His voice was guttural like a beast's, breaking, yet his accent was ... Scottish? #Quote by Kresley Cole

#32. There is absolutely no evidence that it is harmful to children if their mother's health, well-being and autonomy and control of her own destiny is maximized by work outside the home. #Quote by Betty Friedan

#33. You made a point about proof. In this sort of history we do nt have proof ... Yet ... the incontrovertibility of the evidence can be plain even when it is not documentary or complete. #Quote by Robert Conquest

#34. The interplay of depravity here, as it relates to the prostitute's contribution, is in the wilful manoeuvring necessary to mirror the requests and requirements of a psychologically fragile male mind. Manipulation is quite necessary. In fact, with this type of man, it is mandatory; the ability to carry it out is simply a requirement of the job. This is not evidence of some sort of prostitutes' autonomy. It is evidence that this type of client must recognise in his 'mistress' the actions of a master manipulator. There is one reason for this: it arouses him. It is not, truly, at its core, about the woman being in control; it is about the man's need to perceive her to be. In #Quote by Rachel Moran

#35. There is no evidence that super PACs have led to a greater percentage of negative ads. #Quote by Bradley A. Smith

#36. Like many biblical terms we see in scripture, the word "holy" and the call to be holy have often been co-opted by various tribes and adjusted to suit their particular agendas. In my experience, and perhaps this is true for you, too, the call to be holy has been a call to conform. Preachers...then prescribe for us all of the changes we need to make in our lives so that we'll conform to the image and likeness of their particular brand of Christianity. "Holy living," then, becomes a call to conform to the beliefs and practices of a particular group or tribe as evidence that we are truly walking with God.

Although we are called to be imitators of Christ, and to conform to his image and likeness, we must remember that his image and likeness do not conform to any of the various paradigms we like to use to box God in. Holy living, then, becomes conformity with Christ, but radical nonconformity with all those Christian tribes or labels that try to neatly create a limited space where God supposedly lives and works. #Quote by Benjamin L. Corey

#37. We hasten to forget, to wipe away the traces, because preserved facts can become evidence, often at the cost of life. No one knows anything further back than their grandparents; no one looks for their roots. They made history, but live for the day. On short memory. #Quote by Svetlana Alexievich

#38. When outsiders stare into the void that is today's North Korea, they think of remote villages of Africa or Southeast Asia where the civilizing hand of electricity has not yet reached. But North Korea is not an undeveloped country; it is a country that has fallen out of the developed world. You can see the evidence of what once was and what has been lost dangling overhead alongside any major North Korean road - the skeletal wires of the rusted electrical grid that once covered the entire country. #Quote by Barbara Demick

#39. The importance of the facts testified, and their relations to the affairs of the soul, and the life to come, can make no difference in the principles or the mode of weighing the evidence. #Quote by Simon Greenleaf

#40. People talk about evidence as if it could really be weighed in scales by a blind Justice. #Quote by George Eliot

#41. We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid. #Quote by Christopher Hitchens

#42. All the evidence, experimental and even a little theoretical, seems to indicate that it is the energy content which is involved in gravitation, and therefore, since matter and antimatter both represent positive energies, gravitation makes no distinction. #Quote by Richard P. Feynman

#43. Sceptics have often pointed out that no archaeological evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ has been discovered. And they are correct. #Quote by John D. Morris

#44. History is a long and endlessly interesting argument, where evidence is everything and storytelling is everything else. #Quote by Jill Lepore

#45. Delayed gratification is making a choice, constantly convincing yourself to hold back and pursuing immediate gain or profit. #Quote by Sunday Adelaja

#46. No, Dan."

"And you want me to go."

I looked into his eyes. "No. I don't."

He moved closer, encouraged, and put his hand on my shoulder. "Then what do you want, Elle?"

"I want you not to have to settle," I told him.

"Is that what you think I'm doing?"

"I know that's what you'll be doing. Because if you want more from me, you're not going to get it."

He said nothing for a long time. "When I readThe Little Prince, I thought you must be the rose. You with your four thorns, convincing me you're able to defend yourself. But now I know you hate roses. So you must be the fox instead.

So maybe what you really want is for me to tame you."

From a lot of men, that speech would have made me laugh, or roll my eyes. Then again, a lot of men wouldn't have

read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's classic story ofThe Little Prince, or bothered to try and understand it.

I reached for his hand and held it between both of mine. "The fox tells the Little Prince he is a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. Just like the flower was like a hundred thousand other flowers."

Dan tucked a strand of hair behind my ear with the hand I wasn't holding. "But the fox asked the prince to tame him.

To make it so they'd need each other and be unique to each other. And he did it."

"And then the prince went away, Dan, and left the fox bereft." I looked down at my hands #Quote by Megan Hart

#47. Laine had been very proud of herself last night. Nicholas had talked about ghosts and magic and woven a bit of a spell himself. He'd sounded so convincing, so logical, so sad, that she'd found herself wanting to believe him. But testing prods at his argument had made him angry, and long years with Gavin had taught her that angry, defensive people shared the lousy habit of being wrong. #Quote by Stephen M. Irwin

#48. The constitution of madness as a mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, affords the evidence of a broken dialogue, posits the separation as already effected, and thrusts into oblivion all those stammered, imperfect words without fixed syntax in which the exchange between madness and reason was made. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue of reason about madness, has been established only on the basis of such a silence. #Quote by Michel Foucault

#49. And the deal with so many chronic illnesses is that most people won't want to believe you. They will tell you that you look great, that it might be in your head only, that it is likely stress, that everything is okay. None of these are the right things to say to someone whose entire existence is a fairly consistent torture of the body and mind. They say it because they are well-intentioned usually, because they wish you the best, but they also say it because you make them uncomfortable. Your existence is evidence of death. . . . #Quote by Porochista Khakpour

#50. Even the written evidence offered by the executioners tells us that. And it ended with Anastasia not being buried with the rest of her family." Yakov paused. "The DNA experts can speculate all they want, but they still can't say with absolute certainty that any of the bones later found belonged to her. I doubt they ever will." I felt dazed. "How can I know that your version of events is true? #Quote by Glenn Meade

#51. Rhys - if that was even his real name - either believed what he was saying or he was a prime candidate for an Oscar. Because try as Morgan might, she couldn't see any evidence that he was lying. He had to be crazy then, but everything about the whole situation was insane. After all, she was standing in her front yard in her pajamas, holding a naked man at the point of a garden hoe. She'd taken assertive action when she'd seen him lying in the grass, assuming he was drunk or something. Well, she'd gotten the upper hand all right. Now what was she supposed to do with the guy? #Quote by Dani Harper

#52. I am the Raskolnikov of jerking off – the sticky evidence is everywhere! #Quote by Philip Roth

#53. The path is paved with consistent, conscious mental and spiritual alertness and the gradual growth of goodness in our heart and clarity in our mind. We are awake. If we keep trying to understand, we will understand. If we keep telling ourselves that we are loved by Life and if we keep looking for evidence of that love, we will find it. #Quote by Donna Goddard

#54. To think about your life is to create it. You have to take ownership of where you are right now and know where you want to go before you can get there. Keep collecting evidence for your success. You can believe it, and you can be it. #Quote by Ali Vincent

#55. Heaven winked at you, right? Maybe. Maybe it did. Or maybe it was just an airplane and a cloud. But if heaven winks at anybody, it's probably the less-than-conspicious seekers; the ones who choose the path over the avenue, the gap in the hedge over the trumpeted gates. That's probably why there's no verifiable evidence, right?
The universe only winks at the ones no one will believe. #Quote by Michael Cunningham

#56. What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives. #Quote by Sam Harris

#57. Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you - even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition. Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world. So none of this is happening. Such things could not occur. Never a word of it is literally true. #Quote by Neil Gaiman

#58. Some say Edward Snowden is a hero and a patriot. Others say he's a fool and a traitor. The evidence is mounting that the guy who leaked the details about the National Security Agency's Internet-eavesdropping program may be something more sinister - namely, a willing tool in China's ongoing cyberwar against our nation. #Quote by Arthur L. Herman