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He who is not aware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge.

Richard Whately

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Richard Whately
Age: 76 †
Born: 1787
Born: February 1
Died: 1863
Died: October 8
Economist
Philosopher
Priest
Theologian
London
England
Education
Knowledge
Misled
Aware
Intelligence
Ignorance

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The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.
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Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.
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He that is not open to conviction is not qualified for discussion.
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It is also important to guard against mistaking for good-nature what is properly good-humor,--a cheerful flow of spirits and easy temper not readily annoyed, which is compatible with great selfishness.
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Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.
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Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.
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A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.
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The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
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It is quite possible, and not uncommon, to read most laboriously, even so as to get by heart the words of a book, without really studying it at all,--that is, without employing the thoughts on the subject.
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It is a remarkable circumstance in reference to cunning persons that they are often deficient not only in comprehensive, far-sighted wisdom, but even in prudent, cautious circumspection.
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It may be worth noticing as a curious circumstance, when persons past forty before they were at all acquainted form together a very close intimacy of friendship. For grafts of old wood to take, there must be a wonderful congeniality between the trees.
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In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed, we see most dimly the objects which are close around us.
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To follow imperfect, uncertain, or corrupted traditions, in order to avoid erring in our own judgment, is but to exchange one danger for another.
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The more secure we feel against our liability to any error to which, in fact, we are liable, the greater must be our danger of falling into it.
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Some men's reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance.
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Nothing but the right can ever be expedient, since that can never be true expediency which would sacrifice a great good to a less.
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Women never reason, or, if they do, they either draw correct inferences from wrong premises, or wrong inferences from correct premises and they always poke the fire from the top.
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It is a good plan, with a young person of a character to be much affected by ludicrous and absurd representations, to show him plainly by examples that there is nothing which may not be thus represented. He will hardly need to be told that everything is not a mere joke.
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The love of admiration leads to fraud, much more than the love of commendation but, on the other hand, the latter is much more likely to spoil our: good actions by the substitution of an inferior motive.
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Neither human applause nor human censure is to be taken as the best of truth but either should set us upon testing ourselves.
Richard Whately