Ridicule is often employed with more power and success than severity.
Some men are, in regard to ridicule, like tin-roofed buildings in regard to hail: all that hits them bounds rattling off; not a stone goes through.
Ridicule has followed the vestiges of truth, but never usurped her place.
We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which however we can find nowhere in his works, that "ridicule is the test of truth."
The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as insult.
Ridicule often checks what is absurd, and fully as often smothers that which is noble.
Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.
We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.
In the middle ages of Christianity opposition to the State opinions was hushed. The consequence was, Christianity became loaded with all the Romish follies. Nothing but free argument, raillery & even ridicule will preserve the purity of religion.
No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches.
If ridicule were employed to laugh men out of vice and folly, it might be of some use.
One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.
There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.
One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.
The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.
To the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
Reason is the test of ridicule, not ridicule the test of truth.
Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.
Let my name stand among those who are willing to bear ridicule and reproach for the truth's sake, and so earn some right to rejoice when the victory is won.
I think the hardest part about being a teenager is dealing with other teenagers - the criticism and the ridicule, the gossip and rumors.
And took for truth the test of ridicule.
There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.
Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce.
Ridicule has historically proven itself a rickety fence for great ideas.
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