Best 47 quotes of James Randi on MyQuotes

James Randi

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    James Randi

    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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    James Randi

    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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    James Randi

    Blind belief can be comforting, but it can easily cripple reason and productivity, and stop intellectual progress.

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    James Randi

    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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    James Randi

    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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    James Randi

    Feeling better is not actually being better.

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    James Randi

    gods are children's blankets that get carried over into adulthood.

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    James Randi

    Heroin also makes people feel better, but I wouldn't recommend using heroin.

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    James Randi

    However, I believe that it would be difficult to have legitimate scientists agree to participate.

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    James Randi

    I am in a very peculiar business: I travel all over the world telling people what they should already know.

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    James Randi

    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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    James Randi

    I can go into a lab and fool the rear ends off any group of scientists.

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    James Randi

    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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    James Randi

    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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    James Randi

    I questioned her further, and eventually got to talk to her doctor. And her doctor sort of shook his head and he said, I have examined her for throat cancer at least 15 times in the past few years.

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    James Randi

    I want to be cremated, and I want my ashes blown in Uri Geller's eyes.

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    James Randi

    Magicians are the most honest people in the world; they tell you they're gonna fool you, and then they do it.

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    James Randi

    Nature doesn't cheat - people do.

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    James Randi

    No amount of belief makes something a fact.

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    James Randi

    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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    James Randi

    No matter how smart or well-educated you are, you can be deceived.

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    James Randi

    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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    James Randi

    Paranormal phenomena have a habit of going away whenever they are tested under rigorous conditions. This is why the $1,000,000 reward of James Randi, offered to anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal effect under proper scientific controls, is safe.

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    James Randi

    People who are smart get into Mensa. People who are really smart look around and leave.

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    James Randi

    [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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    James Randi

    Religion is based upon blind faith supported by no evidence. Science is based upon confidence that results from evidence - and that confidence can be modified and/or reversed by further observations and experimentation. Science approaches truth, closer and closer, by hard dedicated work. Religion already has it all decided, and it's in the book. It's dogma, unchangeable, and unaffected by reality and whatever facts we come upon in the real world.

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    James Randi

    Science is a search for basic truths about the Universe, a search which develops statements that appear to describe how the Universe works, but which are subject to correction, revision, adjustment, or even outright rejection, upon the presentation of better or conflicting evidence.

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    James Randi

    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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    James Randi

    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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    James Randi

    The market for nonsense is infinite.

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    James Randi

    The New Age? Its just the old age stuck in a microwave oven for fifteen seconds.

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    James Randi

    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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    James Randi

    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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    James Randi

    There exists in society a very special class of persons that I have always referred to as the Believers. These are folks who have chosen to accept a certain religion, philosophy, theory, idea or notion and cling to that belief regardless of any evidence that might, for anyone else, bring it into doubt. They are the ones who encourage and support the fanatics and the frauds of any given age. No amount of evidence, no matter how strong, will bring them any enlightenment. They are the sheep who beg to be fleeced and butchered, and who will battle fiercely to preserve their right to be victimized.

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    James Randi

    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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    James Randi

    There's something about the Houdini act that is not always made clear - about the escape act in general.

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    James Randi

    There was a small boy on crutches. I do not know his name, and I suspect I never will. But I will never forget his face, his smile, his sorrow. He is one of the millions robbed of hope and dignity by charlatans discussed in this book. Wherever and whoever he is, I apologize to him for not having been able to protect him from such an experience. I humbly dedicate this book to him and to the many others who have suffered because the rest of us began caring too late.

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    James Randi

    They would have been very let down if they had to leave the theater and he had missed. He would feel badly. Everyone would feel badly. But he never let them down.

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    James Randi

    Those who believe without reason cannot be convinced by reason.

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    James Randi

    To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby state my opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition, that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s), that devils, demons, angels and saints are myths, that there is no life after death, heaven nor hell, that the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted, medieval dinosaur, and that the Holy Ghost is a comic-book character worthy of laughter and derision.

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    James Randi

    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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    James Randi

    We owe it to our kids to inform them and train them how to think, not what to think.

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    James Randi

    Uri Geller may have psychic powers by means of which he can bend spoons; if so, he appears to be doing it the hard way.

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    James Randi

    We have fought long and hard to escape from medieval superstition. I, for one, do not wish to go back.

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    James Randi

    ... 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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    James Randi

    There exists in society a very special class of persons that I have always referred to as the Believers. These are folks who have chosen to accept a certain religion, philosophy, theory, idea or notion and cling to that belief regardless of any evidence that might, for anyone else, bring it into doubt. They are the ones who encourage and support the fanatics and the frauds of any given age. No amount of evidence, no matter how strong, will bring them any enlightenment. They are the sheep who beg to be fleeced and butchered, and who will battle fiercely to preserve their right to be victimized… patent offices handle an endless succession of inventors who still produce perpetual-motion machines that don't work, but no number of idle flywheels will convince these zealots of their folly; dozens of these patent applications flow in every year. In ashrams all over the world, hopping devotees of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi will never abandon their goal of blissful levitation of their bodies by mind power, despite bruises and sprains aplenty suffered as they bounce about on gym mats like demented (though smiling) frogs, trying to get airborne. Absolutely nothing will discourage them.

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    James Randi

    Yes, I'm a materialist. I'm willing to be shown wrong, but that has not happened — yet. And I admit that the reason I'm unable to accept the claims of psychic, occult, and/or supernatural wonders is because I'm locked into a world-view that demands evidence rather than blind faith, a view that insists upon the replication of all experiments — particularly those that appear to show violations of a rational world — and a view which requires open examination of the methods used to carry out those experiments.