A Quote by H. L. Mencken
The believing mind is externally impervious to evidence. The most that can be accomplished with it is to induce it to substitute one delusion for another. It rejects all overt evidence as wicked.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
We may define "faith" as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith." We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups, substitute different emotions.
You're always believing ahead of your evidence. What was the evidence I could write a poem? I just believed it. The most creative thing in us is to believe in a thing.
Hope is believing in spite of the evidence, and then watching the evidence change.
I take what I see work. I'm a strict believer in the scientific principle of believing nothing, only taking the best evidence available at the present time, interpreting it as best you can, and leaving your mind open to the fact that new evidence will appear tomorrow.
There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something does exist does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist.
No democratic delusion is more fatuous than that which holds that all men are capable of reason, and hence susceptible to conversion by evidence. If religions depended upon evidence for their prolongation, then all of them would collapse.
Actually, he gave false evidence [of chemical weapons]. In this case,[John] Kerry didn't even present any evidence. He talked "we have evidence" and he didn't present anything. Not yet, nothing so far ; not a single shred of evidence.
In Buddhism, we say reincarnation is the conscious taking of rebirth by a Bodhisattva, or by a high being, whereas rebirth, is what most people do. Rebirth is an involuntary process where they seek traction by finding a new body after their subtle mind loses the old one. There are two things commonly said about this. One- there is no evidence for it and two- if there is evidence, what's the mechanism which carries the consciousness from one life to another.
The only evidence, so far as I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence; and secondly, that we are rather sorry that we have not, and wish we had.
We have to be there to get the evidence like what happened in Aleppo when we had evidence. And because the United States didn't send the team, we sent the evidence to the Russians.
What sets science and the law apart from religion is that nothing is expected to be taken on faith. We're encouraged to ask whether the evidence actually supports what we're being told - or what we grew up believing - and we're allowed to ask whether we're hearing all the evidence or just some small prejudicial part of it. If our beliefs aren't supported by the evidence, then we're encouraged to alter our beliefs.
The evidence that you truly repented long ago when you said you did is because you're still repenting now and even to a greater degree. The evidence that you believed a long time ago is that you're still believing now and ever more believing in greater and greater degrees.
There is evidence for the deity of Jesus -- good, strong, historical , cumulative evidence; evidence to which an honest person can subscribe without committing intellectual suicide.
Most scientists never look at UFO evidence, which leads to their conclusion that there is no evidence.
Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense
When you're dealing with a problem as complex as autism, you have to look at it from many different points of view and assemble evidence from many different vantage points. Biological evidence in humans and in animals, toxicologic evidence, how does the body deal with toxins, and evidence looking at the actual experience in populations.
Related Authors
Ayn Rand Quotes
Russian
Writer
C. S. Lewis Quotes
British
Writer
Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes
French
Writer
Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
English
Writer
Haruki Murakami Quotes
Japanese
Writer
J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes
English
Writer
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
American
Writer
Leo Tolstoy Quotes
Russian
Writer
Mark Twain Quotes
American
Writer
Mason Cooley Quotes
American
Writer
Ray Bradbury Quotes
American
Writer
Samuel Johnson Quotes
English
Writer
Seth Godin Quotes
American
Writer
Sherrilyn Kenyon Quotes
American
Writer
Suzanne Collins Quotes
American
Writer