Credulity Quotes - Page 5

• In this metropolis a number of lurking leeches infamously gain subsistence by practicing on the credulity of women.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Numbers, Atheism, Leeches

  Mary Wollstonecraft (2008). “A Vindication of the Rights of Women”, p.191, Cosimo, Inc.

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

  Tacitus

  People, Flattery, Depends

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• Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Successful, Men, Medicine

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.197, Delphi Classics

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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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• 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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• 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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• We were to found a University magazine. A pair of little, active brothers-Livingstone by name, great skippers on the foot, great rubbers of the hands, who kept a book-shop over against the University building-had been debauched to play the part of publishers. We four were to be conjuct editors and, what was the main point of the concern, to print our own works; while, by every rule of arithmetic-that flatterer of credulity-the adventure must succeed and bring great profit. Well, well: it was a bright vision.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Brother, Book, Adventure

  Robert Louis Stevenson (2014). “Memories, Portraits, Essays and Records (Annotated Edition)”, p.54, Jazzybee Verlag

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• And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content. “As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.

  Charles Dickens

  Christmas, Daughter, Home

  Charles Dickens (2016). “Charles Dickens: The Complete Christmas Books and Stories [A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, A Christmas Tree, The Cricket on the Hearth, etc] (Book House)”, p.30, Book House

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• I cannot spare the luxury of believing that all things beautiful are what they seem.

  Fitz-Greene Halleck

  Beautiful, Believe, Luxury

  Fitz-Greene Halleck (1848). “The Poetical Works of Fitz-Greene Halleck: Now First Collected. Illustrated with Steel Engravings, from Drawings by American Artists”, p.64

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• The religious urge in man is not a mere passing phase in the history of his spiritual development, but the ultimate source of all his ethical thought and all his concepts of morality; not the outcome of primitive credulity which a more "enlightened" age could outgrow, but the only answer to a real, basic need of man at all times and in all environments. In another word, it is an instinct.

  Muhammad Asad

  Spiritual, Religious, Real

  Muhammad Asad (1961). “The Principles of State and Government in Islam”, p.10, Univ of California Press

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• Mathematical Knowledge adds a manly Vigour to the Mind, frees it from Prejudice, Credulity, and Superstition.

  John Arbuthnot

  Knowledge, Math, Science

  John Arbuthnot (1701). “An Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning,: In a Letter from a Gentleman in the City to His Friend in Oxford..”, p.7

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• In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our ... nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists, and quacks. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive skepticism of adult science.

  Richard Dawkins

  Skulls, Childhood, Parent

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• Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth by falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages. A peace will equally leave the warrior and the relater of wars destitute of employment; and I know not whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lie.

  Samuel Johnson

  War, Lying, Soldier

  The Idler no. 30 (11 Nov. 1758)

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• The birth of the new constitutes a crisis, and its mastery calls for a crude and simple cast of mind -- the mind of a fighter -- in which the virtues of tribal cohesion and fierceness and infantile credulity and malleability are paramount. Thus every new beginning recapitulates in some degree man's first beginning.

  Eric Hoffer

  Fashion, New Beginnings, Simple

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• We think of religion as the symbolic expression of our highest moral ideals; we think of magic as a crude aggregate of superstitions. Religious belief seems to become mere superstitious credulity if we admit any relationship with magic. On the other hand our anthropological and ethnographical material makes it extremely difficult to separate the two fields.

  Ernst Cassirer

  Religious, Thinking, Expression

  Ernst Cassirer, Maureen Lukay (2006). “An essay on man: an introduction to a philosophy of human culture”, Meiner Verlag

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• Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of the opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington; and baptised according to the formularies of the Church of England in the little church of St. George opposite the large Waterworks Tower that dominated that ridge.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Opposites, Church

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• To believe that Russia has got rid of the evils of capitalism takes a special kind of mind. It is the same kind of mind that believes that a Holy Roller has got rid of sin.

  H. L. Mencken

  Believe, Russia, Evil

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• We must remember how apt man is to extremes--rushing from credulity and weakness to suspicion and distrust.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Men, Rushing, Weakness

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• Suspicion has its dupes, as well as credulity.

  Sophie Swetchine

  Dupes, Suspicion, Wells

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• The general goodness, which is nourished in noble hearts makes every one think that strength of virtue to be in another whereof they find assured foundation in themselves.

  Philip Sidney

  Heart, Thinking, Foundation

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”, p.23

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• Generous souls
  Are still most subject to credulity.

  William Davenant

  Soul, Stills, Subjects

  Sir William Davenant (1872). “Dramatic Works of William D'Avenant”, p.28

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• The age of credulity is every age the world has ever known. Men have always turned from the ascertained, which is limited and discouraging, to the dubious, which is unlimited and full of hope for everybody.

  Agnes Repplier

  Men, Thinking, Age

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• Old heads as well as young may sometimes be charged with ignorance and presumption. The natural course of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Ignorance, Mind, May

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.94

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• Our priests are not what a silly populace supposes; all their learning consists in our credulity.

  Voltaire

  Silly, Religion, Priests

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