Witness

Witness

A witness is someone who has, who claims to have, or is thought, by someone with authority to compel testimony, to have knowledge relevant to an event or other matter of interest. In law a witness is someone who, either voluntarily or under compulsion, provides testimonial evidence, either oral or written, of what he or she knows or claims to know about the matter before some official authorized to take such testimony.

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Famous quotes containing the word witness:

    Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves.
    Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)

    Against my will, I became a witness to the most terrible defeat of reason and to the most savage triumph of brutality ever chronicled ... never before did a generation suffer such a moral setback after it had attained such intellectual heights.
    Stefan Zweig (18811942)

    There yet remains but one concluding tale,
    And then this chronicle of mine is ended—
    Fulfilled, the duty God ordained to me,
    A sinner. Not without purpose did the Lord
    Put me to witness much for many years
    And educate me in the love of books.
    One day some indefatigable monk
    Will find my conscientious, unsigned work;
    Like me, he will light up his ikon-lamp
    And, shaking from the scroll the age-old dust,
    He will transcribe these tales in all their truth.
    Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837)