Quotes on Hearsay

So obscure are the greatest events, as some take for granted any hearsay, whatever its source, others turn truth into falsehood, and both errors find encouragement with posterity.

I believe in nothing that I cannot touch, kiss, embrace.... The rest is only hearsay.

INADMISSIBLE- Not competent to be considered. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible ... but there is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence.

Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.

For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they are born, the city apartment or farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can't come to know by hearsay.

My universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay.

Every breath we draw is a gift of God's love; every moment of existence is a grace.

Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe.

We [tend to] have more faith in what we imitate than in what we originate. We [often feel that we] cannot derive a sense of absolute certitude from anything which has its root in us. The most poignant sense of insecurity comes from standing alone; we are not alone when we imitate.

The difference between hearsay and prophecy is often one of sequence. Hearsay often turns out to have been prophecy.