A Quote by Clarence Darrow

The fact that there is a general belief in a future life is no evidence of its truth

Clarence Darrow

Quote Topics

Belief Evidence Fact Future Future Life General Life Life Is Truth

Quote Author

Clarence Darrow
American - Lawyer
April 18, 1857 - March 13, 1938

The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth.

Bertrand Russell

In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.

David Hume

Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.

Frantz Fanon

That general warrants, whereby an officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offence is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive, and ought not to be granted.

George Mason

Credulity is belief in slight evidence, with no evidence, or against evidence.

Tryon Edwards

Truth is, in fact, an elusive concept. It depends almost entirely on where you are standing at the time. It is a human instinct to confuse belief with truth.

Gwen Ifill

The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief.

Michael Crichton

Evolution is far more than a belief or an educated guess about how people came to be as they are. It is, in fact, the product of converging evidence from many, many different fields of science. Many, many thousands of studies that, in fact, have provided a theory, an organizing principal in fact, that describes how humans came to be.

Alan I. Leshner

The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth. I'm not contending in a dogmatic way that there is not a God. What I'm contending is that we don't know that there is. I don't like the word "absolute." I don't think there is anything absolute whatever. The moral law, for example, is always changing. At one period in the development of the human race, almost everybody thought cannibalism was a duty.

Bertrand Russell

I see myself as a climate change skeptic and a skeptic looks at the evidence and bases conclusions on the evidence rather than on belief. To hold the view that this is not an issue that you need to do something about, to hold the view that it's all a furphy takes belief.

Ross Garnaut

In the most general terms, the Enlightenment goes back to Plato's belief that truth and beauty and goodness are connected; that truth and beauty, disseminated widely, will sooner or later lead to goodness. (While we're making at effort at truth and goodness, beauty reminds us what we're hold out for.)

Susan Neiman

There is not enough evidence, consistent evidence to make it as fact, and I say that because for theory to become a fact, it needs to consistently have the same results after it goes through a series of tests. The tests that they put- that they use to support evolution do not have consistent results. Now too many people are blindly accepting evolution as fact. But when you get down to the hard evidence, it's merely a theory.

Christine O'Donnell

To be sure, the ancient belief that the dream reveals the future is not entirely devoid of truth. By representing to us a wish as fulfilled the dream certainly leads us into the future; but this future, taken by the dreamer as present, has been formed into the likeness of that past by the indestructible wish.

Sigmund Freud

To insist that belief in the Bible demands belief in a young Earth is to put a stumbling block in the path of many nonbelievers. It raises the question of why a God who is committed to revealing truth would make the universe and Earth measure to be old if, in fact, they are not.