Convincing Evidence Quotes

You can't convince a believer of anything;

for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe

Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.

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.

God has given us evidence sufficiently clear to convince those with an open heart and mind.

The devil makes many disciples by preaching against sin.

He convinces them that the great evil of sin, induces a crisis of guilt by which “God is satisfied," and after that he lets them spend the rest of their lives meditating on the intense sinfulness and evident reprobation of other men.

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.

Let one persuade many, and he becomes confirmed and convinced, and cares for no better evidence.

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.

The Jews emerge into history, not a nation of keen spiritual aspirations and altruistic ethics, but that pagan people, worshipping rocks, sheep and cattle, and spirits of caves and wells, of whom the Old Testament, tending towards its higher ideal, gives fragmentary but convincing evidence.

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.

Personally, I am convinced the human personality does survive the change which we call death. Although we have no scientific evidence of this at present, there is no reason to suppose it will always be lacking.

Although I have lived through much darkness, I have seen enough evidence to be unshakably convinced that no difficulty, no fear is so great that it can completely suffocate the hope that springs eternal in the hearts of the young... Do not let that hope die! Stake your lives on it! We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father's love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his Son.

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.

I've lived in the Middle East for twenty-five years.

I know exactly how these issues come up. Even my landlord, who is a moderate Lebanese guy, says, "But bin Laden says what we think." These people believe that Osama bin Laden is being targeted not because of the World Trade Center and Washington; they are not convinced by the evidence that has been produced. They believe he's being targeted because he tells the truth.

I was very struck by the fact that Colin Powell said he would produce evidence of Osama bin Laden fault and then never produced it. Then Tony Blair produced a document of seventy paragraphs, but only the last nine referred to the World Trade Center, and they were not convincing. So we have a little problem here: If they're guilty, where is the evidence? And if we can't hear the evidence, why are we going to war?

I want to give the evidence in a way that is convincing, but I don't want to cheat.

Faith is the lack of evidence, and it shouldn't be that difficult to convince people that the right reason to believe something is that there is evidence for it. People do not innately go for this view, but nevertheless it is not that difficult to teach.

Louis Brandeis actually changes his mind about women's suffrage because he works with these brilliant women in the women's suffrage movement like Josephine Goldmark, his sister-in-law, where he writes a Brandeis brief which convinced the court to uphold maximum hour laws for women by collecting all these facts and empirical evidence.

Even my landlord, who is a moderate Lebanese guy, says, "But bin Laden says what we think." These people believe that bin Laden is being targeted not because of the World Trade Center and Washington; they are not convinced by the evidence that has been produced. They believe he's being targeted because he tells the truth.

We've spent now about 150 years trying to convince ourselves that photographs are reliable evidence, some unimpeachable slice of the real world. That was a myth from the very beginning.

A photograph presents itself not only as a visual representation, but as evidence, more convincing than a painting because of the unimpeachable mechanical means whereby it was made. We do not trust the artist's flattering hand; but we do trust film, and shadows, and light.

I am not an irretrievable skeptic. I am not hopelessly prejudiced. I am perfectly willing to believe, and my mind is wide open; but I have, as yet, to be convinced. I am perfectly willing, but the evidence must be sane and conclusive.

It is foolish to be convinced without evidence, but it is equally foolish to refuse to be convinced by real evidence.

I am convinced that an electronic machine, no matter how smart and intelligent, being still a mere spatial structure in concept, can neither innovate nor even understand the self-evident proposition: 'No spatial structure can be a representation of any feeling'. Such innovation can only be a work of a non-spatial mind, like a human being, and only such innovation, it should be acknowledged, can pave the way for further scientific achievements.

The poor wretches have convinced themselves that they are going to be immortal and live for all time, by worshipping that crucified sophist and living under his laws...they receive these doctrines by tradition, without any definite evidence. So if any charlatan or trickster comes among them, he quickly acquires wealth by imposing upon these simple people.

We falsely interpret the world around us.

We ignore evidence that doesn't support our prior beliefs and we convince ourselves we know things we don. We think we know things we don't know.

Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offense against God, not against man:To God, therefore, not to man, must an account of it be rendered.

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.

Apologys for self-evident Truths can never have any effect on those who have so little Sense as to deny them. They are the Foundation of all Reasoning, and the only just Bottom on which Men can proceed in convincing one another of the Truth: and by consequence whoever is capable of denying them, is not in a condition to be informed.

The heart must be kept tender and pliable;

otherwise agnosticism converts to skepticism. In such a case, the value of apologetics is voided, for apologetics is aimed at persuading doubters, not at refuting the defiant. He who demands a kind of proof that the nature of the case renders impossible, is determined that no possible evidence shall convince him.

The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless, he feels as totally compelling and convincing. We doctors refer to such a belief as 'faith'.

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.

If there's a god, it knows exactly what it would take to convince me and has refused to provide it. In fact, it has gone to great lengths to hide any evidence of its existence. That doesn't seem like a deity that wants to be worshiped to me.

It is true that the American colonials have "free elections," in which they have the absolute right to vote for one of two opposing candidates, both of whom have been handpicked and financed by the Rockefeller syndicate. This touching evidence of "democracy" serves to convince most Americana that we are indeed a free people. We even have a cracked Liberty Bell in Philadelphia to prove it.