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Everyone wishes to have truth on his side, but not everyone wishes to be on the side of truth.

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
Everyone
Truth
Wishes
Side
Sides
Wish

More quotes by Richard Whately

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Though not always called upon to condemn ourselves, it is always safe to suspect ourselves.
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The Eastern monarch who proclaimed a reward to him who should discover a new pleasure, would have deserved well of mankind had he stipulated that it should be blameless.
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Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.
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Superstition is not, as has been defined, an excess of religious feeling, but a misdirection of it, an exhausting of it on vanities of man's devising.
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He that is not open to conviction is not qualified for discussion.
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As the telescope is not a substitute for, but an aid to, our sight, so revelation is not designed to supersede the use of reason, but to supply its deficiencies.
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The tendency of party spirit has ever been to disguise and propagate and support error.
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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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Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.
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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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As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.
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It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another to wish sincerely to be on the side of truth.
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Sophistry, like poison, is at once detected and nauseated, when presented to us in a concentrated form but a fallacy which, when stated barely in a few sentences, would not deceive a child, may deceive half the world, if diluted in a quarto volume.
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Some men's reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance.
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An instinct is a blind tendency to some mode of action, independent of any consideration, on the part of the agent, of the end to which the action leads.
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Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be completely voluntary.
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The best security against revolution is in constant correction of abuses and the introduction of needed improvements. It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
Richard Whately
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It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
Richard Whately
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The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately