Evidence Quotes

Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value the may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.

Carl Sagan

Consent to nothing I can say to you, on bad evidence, and if you are to accept anything I proclaim to be true, let it be to fear and hate the individual who would influence you to stop thinking, and in so doing, repudiate your God given right to know the truth.

Peyton Dracco

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Carl Sagan

Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.

Richard Dawkins

The thing is, it's very dangerous to have a fixed idea. A person with a fixed idea will always find some way of convincing himself in the end that he is right

Atle Selberg

It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.

Isaac Asimov

We must conduct research and then accept the results. If they don't stand up to experimentation, Buddha's own words must be rejected.

Dalai Lama XIV

On the philosophical level, both Buddhism and modern science share a deep suspicion of any notion of absolutes, whether conceptualize as a transcendent being, as an eternal, unchanging principle such as soul, or as a fundamental substratum of reality. ... In the Buddhist investigation of reality, at least in principle, empirical evidence should triumph over scriptural authority, no matter how deeply venerated a scripture may be. ~ 14th Dalai Lama in his talk to the Society for Neuroscience in 2005 in Washington.

Dalai Lama XIV

My main reason for scepticism about the Huxley/Sagan theory is that the human brain is demonstrably eager to see faces in random patterns, as we know from scientific evidence, on top of the numerous legends about faces of Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or Mother Teresa, being seen on slices of toast, or pizzas, or patches of damp on a wall. This eagerness is enhanced if the pattern departs from randomness in the specific direction of being symmetrical.

Richard Dawkins

It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.

Bertrand Russell

[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.

Christopher Hitchens

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

Bertrand Russell