Quotes & Sayings About Circumstantial Evidence

Circumstantial evidence is evidence. — Bernard Goldberg

Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different — Arthur Conan Doyle

There exists a mountain of circumstantial evidence that consciousness survives bodily death. This is the kind of evidence that would stand up in a court of law. Some people believe that science needs better tools to quantify what consciousness is. Perhaps when we discover what consciousness is we will be on the road to providing absolute scientific evidence that there is life after death. — Jean Ritchie

There's overwhelming evidence ... circumstantial and otherwise, to suggest a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. — Mike Pence

The silent workings, and still more the explosions, of human passion which bring to light the darker elements of man's nature present to the philosophical observer considerations of intrinsic interest; while to the jurist, the study of human nature and human character with its infinite varieties, especially as affecting the connection between motive and action, between irregular desire or evil disposition and crime itself, is equally indispensable and difficult." - Wills on Circumstantial Evidence. — Henry B. Irving

And when a woman does fail, she is more likely to believe it's personal - she sucked - while men view it as circumstantial (the business sucked). It's not all bad. Women's fear of failure may prompt them to become better informed; they take the time to read up on their ideas so they can supply evidence. But then of course
there's the feedback loop: People who fear failure are less likely to put forward ideas, to take intellectual risks, and more likely to quit. They tend to avoid new challenges in favor of sticking to what they're already good [at]. — Jessica Bennett

Not to believe in love is a great sign of dullness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection rests on circumstantial evidence. — George Santayana

Witness testimony is always flawed. It's better than circumstantial evidence, sure, but people aren't camcorders; they don't record every action and reaction, and the very act of remembering involves chosing words, actions and images. In other words, any witness who was supposed to be giving a court facts is really just giving them a version of fiction. — Jodi Picoult

God said to accept whatever circumstances that come along. Circumstance is a natural thing. In it, 'Do this and don't do that'- should not be there. Circumstances are a 'scientific circumstantial evidence' ['Vyavasthit']. You should 'settle them with equanimity'. — Dada Bhagwan

It's circumstantial evidence, like finding a trout in the milk. — Henry David Thoreau

We are like a judge confronted by a defendant who declines to answer, and we must determine the truth from the circumstantial evidence. — Alfred Wegener

There's mud on the floor, cigarettes and whisky on the table, fish on a plate for you and a memory of them in my mind. Hardly conclusive evidence I know, but then all evidence is circumstantial. — Douglas Adams

The U.S. government has known since the early 1990s about Soviet-era smallpox weapons, and collected circumstantial evidence of programs elsewhere. — Barton Gellman

and that perhaps the circumstantial evidence against him or her is fairly powerful after all. But — James Duane

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk. — Henry David Thoreau

David Irving has consistenly applied an evidential double standard, demanding absolute documentary proof to convict the Germans (as when he sought to show that Hitler was not responsible for the Holocaust), while relying on circumstantial evidence to condemn the British (as in his account of the Allied bombing of Dresden). — David Cannadine

Circumstantial evidence may not be enough to convict. But it's almost always enough to reveal the truth. Isn't it? — Chris Pavone

What can you do? There's the rub. The most important take-home message with diet and health is that anyone who ever expresses anything with certainty is basically wrong, because the evidence for cause and effect in this area is almost always weak and circumstantial, and changing an individual person's diet may not even be where the action is. — Ben Goldacre

Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution. Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you have witnesses, you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say that she did it with her teeth. — Mark Twain

The evidence for indicting immunisations for SIDS is circumstantial, but compelling. However, the keepers of the keys to medical-research funds are not interested in researching this very important lead to the cause of an ongoing, and possibly preventable, tragedy. Anything that implies that immunisations are not the greatest medical advance in the history of public health is ignored or ridiculed. Can you imagine the economic and political import of discovering that immunisations are killing thousands of babies? — Frederick Douglass

We need only circumstantial evidence to fry you. — Mohamedou Ould Slahi

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

Everything we've seen is deeply disturbing, but we cannot ignore these chondrules. The evidence in favor is conclusive, while the evidence against is circumstantial. — Dan Brown

My worst fears from jury selection manifested themselves in the verdict. This jury needed someone to tell them exactly how Caylee died. Piecing it together from circumstantial evidence was not good enough for them. They wanted the answers on a silver platter, but we didn't have the evidence to serve it that way. It's not just the verdict that tells me this, but also the manner in which it was reached. The fact that they didn't request any materials to review. The fact that they didn't have any questions for the judge. If the statements that the foreman of the jury made to the media are true, ten of these twelve jurors felt that ninety minutes of deliberation was sufficient to fully weigh, consider, and reject four weeks' worth of testimony that we on the prosecution used to establish that this was first-degree murder. The rest of the thirteen hours of deliberation had been spent trying to convince the two holdout jurors of the decision. — Jeff Ashton

Angua picked out the bottle and looked at the label.
"C.M.O.T. Dibbler's Genuine Authentic Soggy Mountain Dew," she read. "He's going to die! It says, 'One hundred and fifty per cent proof'!"
"Nah, that's just old Dibbler's advertising," said Nobby. "It ain't got no proof. Just circumstantial evidence. — Terry Pratchett

In this world we do not have to become the doer, we have to become nimit [an instrument, one of the many scientific circumstantial evidence, not the whole and sole doer]. — Dada Bhagwan

Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world. If I say that there cannot be more than one consciousness in the same mind, this seems a blunt tautology - we are quite unable to imagine the contrary ... — Erwin Schrodinger

In this passage we are taught how hateful a thing is calumny in all free States, as, indeed, in every society, and how we must neglect no means which may serve to check it. And there can be no more effectual means for checking calumny than by affording ample facilities for impeachment, which is as useful in a commonwealth as the other is pernicious. And between them there is this difference, that calumny needs neither witness, nor circumstantial proof to establish it, so that any man may be calumniated by any other; but not impeached; since impeachment demands that there be substantive charges made, and trustworthy evidence to support them. — Niccolo Machiavelli

The humans were sitting cross-legged on the floor in a circle of soldiers, pointing at things and learning more Chimaera words: salt, rat, eat, which unfortunate combination led to Zuzana rejecting the meat on her plate.
"I think it's chicken," Mik said, taking a bite.
"I'm just saying there were a lot more rats around here earlier."
"Circumstantial evidence." Mik took another bite and said, in passable Chimaera and to guffaws of laughter, "Salty delicious rat."
"It's chicken," insisted one of the Shadows That Live. Karou wasn't sure which it was, but she was flapping her arms like wings, and even producing chicken bones to prove it. — Laini Taylor