Kenneth A. Kitchen > Quotes

“The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.”
― Kenneth Kitchen

“No theory can be sacrosanct, and widespread acceptance of a theory does not guarantee its truth.”
― Kenneth A. Kitchen, Ancient Orient and Old Testament

“My problem in replying to you is that Velikovsky always tosses with a two-headed coin. If ordinary orientalists like myself simply leave him aside & get on with real work, he complains of their disdain (& the public are left unprotected). If, conversely, orientalists like myself (who happen to be burdened with several thousands more facts than Velikovsky even dreams of) actually dare to stand up & expose him, then of course he snidely implies that we are some sort of closed caucus with interests at stake. It’s always “heads you lose, tails I win”…. Would you, I reflectively wonder, publish a book that insisted on the identity of Harold Wilson and Harold of Hastings, of Napoleon, Bismarck & Charlemagne, and on the role of your firm as secret HQ of the IRA, all as absolutely genuine historical fact, with “proofs” (e.g., all aunts in France are large, because tante is the feminine for tant)? Because that is, comparatively, the level of historical fraud that V. represents.”
― Kenneth A. Kitchen, The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe