William of Ockam Quotes

I don't have to have faith, I have experience.

Faith is an island in the setting sun, But proof is the bottom line for everyone.

Convictions do not imply reasons.

In all things, therefore, where we have clear evidence from our ideas, and those principles of knowledge I have above mentioned, reason is the proper judge; and revelation, though it may, in consenting with it, confirm its dictates, yet cannot in such cases invalidate its decrees: nor can we be obliged, where we have the clear and evident sentience of reason, to quit it for the contrary opinion, under a pretence that it is matter of faith: which can have no authority against the plain and clear dictates of reason.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

The word 'belief' is a difficult thing for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it - I don't need to believe it.

If all you have is faith, then you never actually know anything.

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.

Science stands for rational thought, faith for superstition and unreason.

A statement is persuasive and credible either because it is directly self-evident or because it appears to be proved from other statements that are so.

If your faith is opposed to experience, to human learning and investigation, it is not worth the breath used in giving it expression.

Namely, we have no right to believe a thing true because everybody says so unless there are good grounds for believing that some one person at least has the means of knowing what is true, and is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.

Believe one who has proved it. Believe the expert.

In my opinion, it helps enormously to know why something is true, rather than being told it is true, for why should you believe me? Never believe anything on the authority of a single person but seek confirmation — and reason is the best confirmation

Though what we accept be true, it is a prejudice unless we ourselves have considered and understood why and how it is true.

The scientist insists on verification; the religious theologian does not; the philosopher sometimes does and sometimes does not

People are always demanding proof. These are things that are not easily proved.

GIVE ME YOUR REASON TO BELIeVE

What evidence do you have that you know Jesus?

For just as the first general precepts of the law of nature are self-evident to one in possession of natural reason, and have no need of promulgation, so also that of believing in God is primary and self-evident to one who has faith: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is.

If faith is a valid tool of knowledge, then anything can be true 'by faith,' and therefore nothing is true. If the only reason you can accept a claim is by faith, then you are admitting that the claim does not stand on its own merits.

Even facts become fictions without adequate ways of seeing "the facts". We do not need theories so much as the experience that is the source of the theory. We are not satisfied with faith, in the sense of an implausible hypothesis irrationally held: we demand to experience the "evidence".

There are those, of course, who deny that they need any form of authority. They are the popular atheists and agnostics. Such men say that they must be shown by 'reason' whatever they are to accept as true. But the great thinkers among non-Christian men have taken no such position. They know that they cannot cover the whole area of reality with their knowledge.

No evidence or proof of the existence of a God has been found in the phenomena of nature, based on experience.

By far the best proof is experience.