Author details
All William Kingdon Clifford Quotes
Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race.
William Kingdon Clifford
69% of people like this quote
There is no scientific discoverer, no poet, no painter, no musician, who will not tell you that he found ready made his discovery or poem or picture - that it came to him from outside, and that he did not consciously create it from within.
William Kingdon Clifford
63% of people like this quote
The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.
William Kingdon Clifford
60% of people like this quote
This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation.
William Kingdon Clifford
58% of people like this quote
It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
William Kingdon Clifford
56% of people like this quote
The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs.
William Kingdon Clifford
56% of people like this quote
Nor is it that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it.
William Kingdon Clifford
56% of people like this quote
To consider only one other such witness: the followers of the Buddha have at least as much right to appeal to individual and social experience in support of the authority of the Eastern saviour.
William Kingdon Clifford
55% of people like this quote
The rule which should guide us in such cases is simple and obvious enough: that the aggregate testimony of our neighbours is subject to the same conditions as the testimony of any one of them.
William Kingdon Clifford
55% of people like this quote
We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, then when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn.
William Kingdon Clifford
55% of people like this quote
To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
William Kingdon Clifford
55% of people like this quote
A little reflection will show us that every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions.
William Kingdon Clifford
54% of people like this quote
To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances.
William Kingdon Clifford
53% of people like this quote
No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.
William Kingdon Clifford
53% of people like this quote
Related authors