Credulity Quotes - Page 6

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

  Voltaire

  Silly, Religion, Priests

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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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• 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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• 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 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• The New Age movement looks like a mixed bag. I see much in it that seems good: It's optimistic; it's enthusiastic; it has the capacity for belief. On the debit side, I think one needs to distinguish between belief and credulity. How deep does New Age go? Has it come to terms with radical evil? More, I am not sure how much social conscience there is in New Age thinking.

  Huston Smith

  Optimistic, Thinking, Evil

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• There are indeed, in the present corruption of mankind, many incitements to forsake truth: the need of palliating our own faults and the convenience of imposing on the ignorance or credulity of others so frequently occur; so many immediate evils are

  Samuel Johnson

  Ignorance, Evil, Needs

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.166

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• Credulity forges more miracles than trickery could invent.

  Joseph Joubert

  Miracle, Trickery

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• In the whole of your absurd past you discover so much that's absurd, so much deceit and credulity, that it might be a good idea to stop being young this minute, to wait for youth to break away from you and pass you by, to watch it going away, receding in the distance, to see all its vanity, run your hand through the empty space it has left behind, take a last look at it, and then start moving, make sure your youth has really gone, and then calmly, all by yourself, cross to the other side of Time to see what people and things really look like.

  Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  Running, Distance, Moving

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• The New Testament rests itself for credulity and testimony on what are called prophecies in the Old Testament, of the person called Jesus Christ; and if there are no such things as prophecies of any such person in the Old Testament, the New Testament.

  Thomas Paine

  Jesus, Christ, Old Testament

  Thomas Paine (1859). “The Theological Works ...: The Most Complete Ed. Ever Pub”, p.216

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• Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of the students.

  Paulo Freire

  Exercise, Students, Domination

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.56, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• Credulity as a character trait is encouraged in every child who grows up with religious training, which invariably insists on the virtue of blind faith and the sinfulness of doubting and questioning.

  Barbara G. Walker

  Religious, Children, Growing Up

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• Credulity is the sister of innocence.

  Fanny Burney

  Innocence, Gullibility

  Frances Burney, Fanny Burney (2015). “Complete Works of Frances Burney (Delphi Classics)”, p.250, Delphi Classics

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• Incredulity is not wisdom, but the worst kind of folly. It is folly, because it causes ignorance and mistake, with all the consequents of these; and it is very bad, as being accompanied with disingenuity, obstinacy, rudeness, uncharitableness, and the like bad dispositions; from which credulity itself, the other extreme sort of folly, is exempt.

  Isaac Barrow

  Mistake, Ignorance, Causes

  Isaac Barrow, James Hamilton (1861). “The works of Isaac Barrow”, p.163

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• Love is an affair of credulity.

  Ovid

  Love, Love Is, Affair

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• Credulity is always a ridiculous, often a dangerous failing: it has made of many a clever man, a fool; and of many a good man, a knave.

  Frances Wright

  Clever, Men, Good Man

  Frances Wright (1831). “A Few Days in Athens: Being the Translation of a Greek Manuscript Discovered in Herculaneum”, p.31

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• Faith does not mean credulity...

  Ronald Fisher

  "Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference". Book by Ronald Fisher, 1956.

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• The Christ is a myth. The Holy Ghost Priestcraft overshadowed the harlot Superstition; this Christ was born; and the Joseph of humanity, beguiled by the Gabriel of credulity, was induced to support the family. But the soldiers of Reason have crucified the illegitimate impostor, he is dead; and the ignorant disciples and hysterical women who still linger about the cross should take his body down and bury it.

  John Remsburg

  Support, Soldier, Humanity

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• All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. All intellectual and artistic ambitions are permissible, up to and even beyond the limit of prudent sanity. They can hurt no one.

  Joseph Conrad

  Hurt, Ambition, Intellectual

  Joseph Conrad (2015). “Joseph Conrad’s Sea Tales - Premium Collection: An Outcast of the Islands, The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’, A Smile of Fortune, Typhoon and more: Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists (Including Author’s Memoirs, Letters & Critical Essays)”, p.1118, e-artnow

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• We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt.

  Edmund Burke

  Believe, Men, Thinking

  'Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents' (1770) p. 30

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