WIST Quotations

Hitchens, Christopher -- “Mommie Dearest,” Slate (20 Oct 2003)

Dave — Mon, 17 May 2021 20:54:08 +0000

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) English intellectual, polemicist, socio-political critic
“Mommie Dearest,” Slate (20 Oct 2003)

Sometimes referred to as Hitchens' Razor. The concept is not new (consider the Latin phrase "Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur"), but was popularized by Hitchens in discussion of contemporary discussion of religion, including in his work God Is Not Great (2007).

While cited by a number of sources to the 2003 Slate article on the canonization of Mother Teresa, the phrase does not appear in the 2016 reprint of the article at the time she was actually declared a saint.

More information (including the original Slate text): The long history of Hitchens' Razor • Background Probability.

Stoppard, Tom -- Jumpers, Act 1 (1972)

Dave — Fri, 26 Sep 2014 11:41:21 +0000

GEORGE: There is presumably a calendar date — a moment — when the onus of proof passed from the atheist to the believer, when, quite suddenly, secretly, the noes had it.

Tom Stoppard (1937-2025) Czech-English playwright and screenwriter
Jumpers, Act 1 (1972)

Ericsson, Graham -- Journal (2008-07-27)

Dave — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 02:29:37 +0000

Where religion speaks of the heart and soul, and of what happens before we’re born and after we die, and why, then agreeing or disagreeing with it is a matter of personal taste, spirit, and judgment. Where it speaks of the objective, of the real world, of what evidence of our eyes should be accepted or rejected, it is worth no more than anyone else spouting off at a cocktail party.

Graham Ericsson (b. 1961) American technologist, writer, aphorist
Journal (2008-07-27)

Huxley, T. H. -- Essay (1889-06), “Agnosticism and Christianity,” The Nineteenth Century magazine, Vol. 25, No. 148

Dave — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:11:50 +0000

Agnosticism is not properly described as a “negative” creed, nor indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as it expresses absolute faith in the validity of a principle which is as much ethical as intellectual. This principle may be stated in various ways, but they all amount to this: that it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what Agnosticism asserts; and, in my opinion, it is all that is essential to Agnosticism.

T. H. Huxley (1825-1895) English biologist [Thomas Henry Huxley]
Essay (1889-06), “Agnosticism and Christianity,” The Nineteenth Century magazine, Vol. 25, No. 148
(Source)

Collected in his Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions, ch. 12 (1892).

Russell, Bertrand -- “Is There a God?” (1952)

Dave — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:08:25 +0000

Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
“Is There a God?” (1952)
(Source)

Essay commissioned by Illustrated magazine in 1952, but never published there. First publication in Russell, Last Philosophical Testament, 1943-68 (1997) [ed. Slater/Köllner].

I believe this is the earliest (chronologically) reference by Russell to his teapot analogy.