In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat, for which they had at least the evidence of their senses: we believe it to be round, not because as many as 1 percent of us could give the physical reasons for so quaint a belief, but because modern science has convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that is magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic, microscopic, heartless, or outrageous is scientific.
—George Bernard Shaw
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
—Bertrand Russell
Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
—Brendan Gill
The neurochemistry of the brain is astonishingly busy, the circuitry of a machine more wonderful than any devised by humans. But there is no evidence that its functioning is due to anything more than the 1014 neural connections that build an elegant architecture of consciousness.
—Carl Sagan in Cosmos
School is an institution built on the axiom that learning is the result of teaching. And institutional wisdom continues to accept this axiom, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
—Ivan Illich
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
—Henry David Thoreau
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
—H. L. Mencken