Credulity Quotes - Page 4

• I do not call reason that brutal reason which crushes with its weight what is holy and sacred, that malignant reason which delights in the errors it succeeds in discovering, that unfeeling and scornful reason which insults credulity.

  Joseph Joubert

  Crush, Errors, Delight

  Joseph Joubert (1896). “Pensées of Joubert”

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• A rational reaction against the irrational excesses and vagaries of scepticism may, I admit, readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity. To be engaged in opposing wrong affords, under the conditions of our mental constitution, but a slender guarantee for being right.

  William E. Gladstone

  Guarantees, Excess, Rivals

  "Homeric Synchronism : An Enquiry Into the Time and Place of Homer". Book by William Ewart Gladstone, 1876.

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• People flatter us because they can depend upon our credulity.

  Tacitus

  People, Flattery, Depends

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• Our credulity is a part of the imperfection of our natures. It is inherent in us to desire to generalize, when we ought, on the contrary, to guard ourselves very carefully from this tendency.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Imperfection, Desire, Tendencies

  "Napoleon : In His Own Words" edited by Jules Bertaut, translated by Herbert Edward Law and Charles Lincoln Rhodes, (Ch. VII), 1916.

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• A little doubt is better than total credulity.

  Al-Maʿarri

  Doubt, Littles

  "Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out". Book by Ibn Warraq, May 1, 2003.

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• There seems to me to be absolutely no limit to the inanity and credulity of the human race. Homo Sapiens! Homo idioticus!

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Humorous, Sarcasm, Race

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated)”, p.1779, Delphi Classics

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• If I could do just one thing, it would be to dissociate faith from virtue, now and for good, and to expose it for what it is, a servile weakness, a refuge in cowardice, and a willingness to follow, with credulity, people who are in the highest degree unscrupulous.

  Christopher Hitchens

  People, Religion, Degrees

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• Skepticism rather than credulity is the highest principle that the human intellect can use to ennoble our existence.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Religion, Use, Principles

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• The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar.

  Thomas Paine

  Jesus, Believe, Imagination

  Thomas Paine (1830). “The Theological Works of Thomas Paine: To which are Added the Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar”, p.138

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• Scenes are now to take place as will open the eyes of credulity and of insanity itself, to the dangers of a paper medium abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Eye, Insanity, Paper

  Thomas Jefferson (2011). “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Volume 7: 28 November 1813 to 30 September 1814”, p.654, Princeton University Press

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• We live in a time of twin credulities: the hunger for the miraculous combined with a servile awe of science. The mating of the two gives us superstition plus scientism -- a Mongoloid metaphysic.

  Edward Abbey

  Two, Giving, Superstitions

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.13, RosettaBooks

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• There is nothing more awe-inspiring than a miracle except the credulity that can take it at par.

  Mark Twain

  Miracle, Awe Inspiring, Awe

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.272, Courier Corporation

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• A peculiar side of credulity is that it is often joined with a proneness to imposture. The association of believing and lying is not characteristic solely of children. They inability or unwillingness to see things as they are promotes both gullibility and charlatanism.

  Eric Hoffer

  Children, Lying, Integrity

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• Too much doubt is better than too much credulity.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Doubt, Religion, Atheism

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.977, Library of Alexandria

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• Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Education, Teacher, Father

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.5797, e-artnow

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• No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

  Francis Bacon

  Knowledge, Science, Understanding

  Francis Bacon (2012). “The Great Instauration”, p.63, Simon and Schuster

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• One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.

  Bertrand Russell

  Truth, Evil, Growth

  Bertrand Russell, Richard A. Rempel, Beryl Haslam (2000). “Uncertain Paths to Freedom: Russia and China, 1919-22”, p.360, Psychology Press

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• [Vestiges begins] from principles which are at variance with all sober inductive truth. The sober facts of geology shuffled, so as to play a rogue's game; phrenology (that sinkhole of human folly and prating coxcombry); spontaneous generation; transmutation of species; and I know not what; all to be swallowed, without tasting and trying, like so much horse-physic!! Gross credulity and rank infidelity joined in unlawful marriage, and breeding a deformed progeny of unnatural conclusions!

  Adam Sedgwick

  Horse, Science, Games

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• Some things mankind can finish and be done with, but not ... science, that persists, and changes from ancient Chaldeans studying the stars to a new telescope with a 200-inch reflector and beyond; not religion, that persists, and changes from old credulities and world views to new thoughts of God and larger apprehensions of his meaning.

  Harry Emerson Fosdick

  Change, God, Stars

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• Because religious training means credulity training, churches should not be surprised to find that so many of their congregations accept astrology as readily as theology, or a channeled Atlantean priest as readily as a biblical prophet.

  Barbara G. Walker

  Religious, Mean, Biblical

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• Those old credulities, to Nature dear, Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock Of history?

  William Wordsworth

  Nature, Historical, Dear

  William Wordsworth (1847). “The Poems of William Wordsworth”, p.274

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• As its best, SF is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we cant predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe. Poised between intransigent scepticism and uncritical credulity, it is par excellence the literature of the open mind.

  John Brunner

  Mind, Excellence, Different

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• The medieval doctors of divinity who did not pretend to settle how many angels could dance on the point of a needle cut a very poor figure as far as romantic credulity is concerned beside the modern physicists who have settled to the billionth of a millimetre every movement and position in the dance of the electrons. Not for worlds would I question the precise accuracy of these calculations or the existence of electrons (whatever they may be). The fate of Joan is a warning to me against such heresy.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Angel, Fate, Cutting

  George Bernard Shaw (1993). “The Complete Prefaces: 1914-1929”, Viking Adult

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• I think it better to keep a profound silence with regard to the Christian fables, which are canonized by their antiquity and the credulity of absurd and insipid people.

  Frederick The Great

  Christian, Thinking, People

  Letter 37 to Voltaire on June 1738. "Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great", translated by Richard Aldington, 1927.

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• The State is not force alone. It depends upon the credulity of man quite as much as upon his docility. Its aim is not merely to make him obey, but also to make him want to obey.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Want, States

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.315, Knopf

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