James Randi Quotes
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The New Age? Its just the old age stuck in a microwave oven for fifteen seconds.
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No matter how smart or well-educated you are, you can be deceived.
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... We in the USA have been depending on prayers, pleading, and self-abasement to a deity to bring us magical advantages, and have been encouraged to attribute our prosperity and general success among nations, to that sort of action. In my opinion, hard work and dedication to logic and reason ought to be recognized as the reasons for our achievements, not appeals to a mythical friend-in-the-sky. We got where we are in spite of, not because of, those incantations.
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However, I believe that it would be difficult to have legitimate scientists agree to participate.
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Everyone who believes in telekinesis, raise my hand.
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Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work.
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The conjuror or con man is a very good provider of information. He supplies lots of data, by inference or direct statement, but it's false data. Scientists aren't used to that scenario. An electron or a galaxy is not capricious, nor deceptive; but a human can be either or both.
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A lot of people hate my skepticism, and I think I understand why. The psychics offer wonders and endless possibilities in a world that often seems difficult and mundane. They promise health, wealth, wisdom, eternal life. But if you examine the record, it's not the psychics but the hard-nosed scientists who have actually delivered the things that improve human life. And, to me, science describes a world far more interesting than any psychic fantasy. It's a good world -- not perfect -- but it's ours. So we'd better learn to live with it, the way it is.
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A quick example of that is a woman who said she'd been healed of throat cancer where the faith healer admitted he touched her on the forehead.
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gods are children's blankets that get carried over into adulthood.
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The market for nonsense is infinite.
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No amount of belief makes something a fact.
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I don't expect that the million will ever be won, simply because there is no confirming evidence for any paranormal claims to date.
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The only difference is that religion is much better organized and has been around much longer, but it's the same story with different characters and different costumes.
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Expose every belief to the light of reason, discourse, facts, scientific observations; question everything, be sceptical because this is the only chance at life you will ever get.
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To recognize that nature has neither a preference for our species nor a bias against it takes only a little courage.
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People who are smart get into Mensa. People who are really smart look around and leave.
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Escapology has one thing going for it that probably made Harry Houdini such a superstar in his day and a legend in the present. Everyone wants to escape from something. Taxes, contracts, illness, work, the multitude of burdens that we chafe under are shadows from which we want to escape.
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Feeling better is not actually being better.
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[Psychics] use exactly the same gimmicks that we magicians do - the same physical methods, the same psychological methods - and they effectively and profoundly deceive millions of people around the earth, to their detriment.
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Death is the ultimate disappointment
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I do not expect that homeopathy will ever be established as a legitimate form of treatment, but I do expect that it will continue to be popular.
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Those who believe without reason cannot be convinced by reason.
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No evidence against a firmly-held belief, no matter how good or abundant it may be, will sway the true believer.
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One thing that has made a big comeback just recently is this business of speaking with the dead. To my innocent mind, 'dead' implies incapable of communicating.
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I believe in the basic goodness of my species, because that appears to be a positive tactic and quality that leads to better chances of survival- and in spite of our foolishness, we seem to have survived.
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There is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.
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Nature doesn't cheat - people do.
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The problem with experiments has always been that human beings make the decisions on whether or not the animals have benefitted from the treatment.
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Heroin also makes people feel better, but I wouldn't recommend using heroin.
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