Credulity Quotes - Page 4

• 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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• 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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• 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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• Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, - attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

  Samuel Johnson

  Historical, Listening, Promise

  'Rasselas' (1759) ch. 1

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• That day, I began to be incredulous. Or, rather, I regretted having been credulous. I regretted having allowed myself to be borne away by a passion of the mind. Such is credulity.

  Umberto Eco

  Passion, Mind

  Umberto Eco (2007). “Foucault's Pendulum”, p.60, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• All men are, at times, influenced by inexplicable sentiments. Ideas haunt them in spite of all their efforts to discard them. Prepossessions are entertained, for which their reason is unable to discover any adequate cause. The strength of a belief, when it is destitute of any rational foundation, seems, of itself, to furnish a new ground for credulity. We first admit a powerful persuasion, and then, from reflecting on the insufficiency of the ground on which it is built, instead of being prompted to dismiss it, we become more forcibly attached to it.

  Charles Brockden Brown

  Powerful, Men, Ideas

  Charles Brockden Brown (1987). “Somnambulism and other stories”, Peter Lang Publishing

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

  Tacitus

  People, Flattery, Depends

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• Cunning has effect from the credulity of others, rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It requires no extraordinary talents to lie and deceive.

  Samuel Johnson

  Lying, Deceit, Talent

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Robert Carruthers (1852). “The journal of a tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.”, p.171

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• The magician depends for the success of his art upon the credulity of the people. Whatever mystifies, excites curiosity; whatever in turn baffles this curiosity, works the marvelous.

  Alexander Herrmann

  Art, People, Curiosity

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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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• 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 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 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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• 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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• A rational reaction against irrational excesses and vagaries of skepticism may * * * readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity.

  William E. Gladstone

  Excess, Rivals, May

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

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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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• It's only fashion that has said the pendulum has swung from extreme skepticism about extraterrestrial life to extreme credulity. The truth is somewhere in between.

  Paul Davies

  Fashion, Truth Is, Said

  "Big Think Interview With Paul Davies". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. April 15, 2010.

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• Indians, of course, have no "theology," and indeed no word for the system of credulity in which the white priests arrange for God, who must be entirely bewildered by it, a series of excuses for his failures.

  Sinclair Lewis

  White, Excuse, Priests

  "The God-Seeker". Book by Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 41, 1949.

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• In a media-saturated world, persistent hype lends unwarranted credulity to the wildest claims.

  Michael Crichton

  Media, Hype, World

  Michael Crichton (2007). “Next”, HarperCollins UK

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• If you are often deceived by those around you, you may be sure that you deserve to be deceived; and that instead of railing at the general falseness of mankind, you have first to pronounce judgment on your own jealous tyranny, or on your own weak credulity.

  Arthur Helps

  Jealous, Deception, May

  Sir Arthur Helps (1883). “Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd”

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• The Christian test was a willingness to believe in the one Jesus Christ and His Message of salvation. What was demanded was not criticism but credulity. The Church Fathers observed that in the realm of thought only heresy had a history.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Christian, Jesus, Father

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2011). “The Discoverers”, p.572, Vintage

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• Love is an alchemist that can transmute poison into food--and a spaniel, that prefers even punishment from one hand to caresses from another. But it is in love as in war, we are often more indebted for our success to the weakness of the defence than to the energy of the attack; for mere idleness has ruined more women than passion; vanity more than idleness, and credulity more than either.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Love, War, Passion

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• Faith may rise into miracles of might, as some few wise men have shown; faith may sink into credulities of weakness, as the mass of fools have witnessed.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Faith, Wise, Men

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1851). “Tupper's Proverbial philosophy: a book of thoughts and arguments, originally treated : first and second series”, p.224

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