Dogmatism Quotes - Page 2

• No man should dogmatize except on the subject of theology. Here he can take his stand, and by throwing the burden of proof on the opposition, he is invincible. We have to die to find out whether he is right.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Men, Burden Of Proof, Should

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• Tormented by conflicting feelings, I appealed to reason ; and it is reason which, amid so many dogmatic contradictions, now forces the hypothesis upon me. A priori dogmatism, applying itself to God, has proved fruitless: who knows whither the hypothesis, in its turn, will lead us? I will explain therefore how, studying in the silence of my heart, and far from every human consideration, the mystery of social revolutions, God, the great unknown, has become for me an hypothesis, I mean a necessary dialectical tool.

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  Mean, Heart, Silence

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1888). “System of Economical Contradictions: Or, The Philosophy of Misery”

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• Dogmation is puppyism come to its full growth.

  Douglas William Jerrold

  Growth, Opinion

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• It's not so much religion per se, it's false certainty that worries me, and religion just has more than its fair share of false certainty or dogmatism. I'm really concerned when I see people pretending to know things they clearly cannot know.

  Sam Harris

  Worry, People, Pretending

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• Dogmatism is by far the best fall-back defense, the most impregnable castle, that ignorance can find. It's also a dead give-away that the person doesn't know why he believes what he believes.

  Bob Altemeyer

  Fall, Believe, Ignorance

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• Bigotry is chronic dogmatism.

  Horace Greeley

  Bigotry

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• Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize or accept another's dogmatism.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Motivational, Inquiry, Exploration

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.100, Рипол Классик

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• Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another's dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Stars, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1876). “Nature: Addresses, and Lectures”, p.152

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• To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Evil, Inquiry, Spirit

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Epigrams by Ambrose Bierce”, p.2, e-artnow

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• The book has never been written which is to be accepted without any allowance.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Bible, Book, Accepted

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.491, Simon and Schuster

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• Great theories are expansive; failures mire us in dogmatism and tunnel vision.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Tunnels, Vision, Theory

  Stephen Jay Gould (1993). “Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history”, Vintage

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• In any fairly large and talkative community such as a university there is always the danger that those who think alike should gravitate together where they will henceforth encounter opposition only in the emasculated form of rumour that the outsiders say thus and thus. The absent are easily refuted, complacent dogmatism thrives, and differences of opinion are embittered by the group hostility. Each group hears not the best, but the worst, that the other group can say.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wisdom, Thinking, Differences

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• He remembered having said to his uncle (with a solemn dogmatism better befitting a much younger man): "Surely it is possible to love with the head as well as the heart." Mr. Delagardie had replied, somewhat drily: "No doubt; so long as you do not end by thinking with your entrails instead of your brain.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Uncles, Heart, Men

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2012). “Busman's Honeymoon”, p.316, Open Road Media

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• Whether you believe in God or not does not matter so much, whether you believe in Buddha or not does not matter so much; as a Buddhist, whether you believe in reincarnation or not does not matter so much. You must lead a good life. And a good life does not mean just good food, good clothes, good shelter. These are not sufficient. A good motivation is what is needed: compassion, without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy; just understanding that others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their rights and human dignity.

  Dalai Lama

  Spiritual, Brother, Buddhist

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• Our Press and our schools cultivate Chauvinism, militarism, dogmatism, conformism and ignorance. The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as though the proclamation of the Rights of Man had never been. We have built up the most gigantic police apparatus, with informers made a national institution, and the most refined scientific system of political and mental torture. We whip the groaning masses of the country towards a theoretical future happiness, which only we can.

  Arthur Koestler

  Country, School, Ignorance

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• Dogmatism of all kinds--scientific, economic, moral, as well as political--are threatened by the creative freedom of the artist. This is necessarily and inevitably so. We cannot escape our anxiety over the fact that the artists together with creative persons of all sorts, are the possible destroyer of our nicely ordered systems. (p. 76)

  Rollo May

  Artist, Creative, Anxiety

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• But there's a fourth interpretation: Obama can't leave his comfort zone. No president since Woodrow Wilson has been as enamored of abstract ideas or more sure that disagreement with him is proof of ignorance, bad faith or dogmatism. As a candidate, he insisted his real opponent was 'cynicism,' and in his address last week, he returned to this trite formulation, insisting again he was bravely battling the cynics.

  Jonah Goldberg

  Real, Ignorance, Ideas

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• Skepticism relieved two terrible diseases that afflicted mankind: anxiety and dogmatism.

  Sextus Empiricus

  Two, Anxiety, Disease

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• Where suspicion fills the air and holds scholars in line for fear of their jobs, there can be no exercise of the free intellect. Supineness and dogmatism take the place of inquiry. A problem can no longer be pursued to its edges. Fear stalks the classroom. The teacher is no longer a stimulant to adventurous thinking; she becomes instead a pipe line for safe and sound information. A deadening dogma takes the place of free inquiry. Instruction tends to become sterile; pursuit of knowledge is discouraged; discussion often leaves off where it should begin.

  William O. Douglas

  Teacher, Jobs, Fear

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• I have never in my life encountered a religion as oppressive, cold, and stiff as Progressivism. I've never known a faith more eager to burn heretics at the stake. Even a fundamentalist Iranian Muslim would flinch if he came face to face with a western liberal's rigid dogmatism. I imagine that even a Saudi Arabian Islamic cleric would take one look at how American left wingers react when anyone deviates ever so slightly from their established orthodoxy, and say to himself, 'man, these people REALLY need to chill.

  Matt Walsh

  Islamic, Men, People

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• A candid spirit is mightier than the most persistent dogmatism.

  Amos Bronson Alcott

  Spirit, Candid, Persistent

  Amos Bronson Alcott (1877). “Table-talk”

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• It is those people who know that they are right because some outside or higher power conveys the conviction to them who do the great damage in the world.

  Maxwell Perkins

  People, World, Damage

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• Tradition itself, in times of dogmatism and dogmatic revolution, is a revolutionary force which must be safeguarded.

  Peter Brook

  Revolution, Tradition, Force

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• How strange it is to see with how much passion People see things only in their own fashion!

  Moliere

  Fashion, Passion, People

  Jean-Baptiste Moliere (2015). “Tartuffe and Other Plays”, p.75, Penguin

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• The Universe is vast. Nothing is more curious than the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge. Skeptics and believers are alike. At this moment scientists and skeptics are the leading dogmatists. Advance in detail is admitted; fundamental novelty is barred. This dogmatic common sense is the death of philosophic adventure.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Adventure, Self, Common Sense

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