Quote

To follow imperfect, uncertain, or corrupted traditions, in order to avoid erring in our own judgment, is but to exchange one danger for another.

Richard Whately

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Richard Whately
Age: 76 †
Born: 1787
Born: February 1
Died: 1863
Died: October 8
Economist
Philosopher
Priest
Theologian
London
England
Imperfect
Avoid
Tradition
Judgment
Erring
Follow
Corrupted
Danger
Traditions
Another
Exchange
Order
Uncertain

More quotes by Richard Whately

Image
Falsehood is difficult to be maintained. When the materials of a building are solid blocks of stone, very rude architecture will suffice but a structure of rotten materials needs the most careful adjustment to make it stand at all.
Richard Whately
Image
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.
Richard Whately
Image
Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.
Richard Whately
Image
It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
Richard Whately
Image
Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be completely voluntary.
Richard Whately
Image
He who is not aware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge.
Richard Whately
Image
One way in which fools succeed where wise men fail is that through ignorance of the danger they sometimes go coolly about a hazardous business.
Richard Whately
Image
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.
Richard Whately
Image
As there are dim-sighted people who live in a sort of perpetual twilight, so there are some who, having neither much clearness of head nor a very elevated tone of morality, are perpetually haunted by suspicions of everybody and everything.
Richard Whately
Image
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.
Richard Whately
Image
As hardly anything can accidentally touch the soft clay without stamping its mark on it, so hardly any reading can interest a child, without contributing in some degree, though the book itself be afterwards totally forgotten, to form the character.
Richard Whately
Image
A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.
Richard Whately
Image
Nothing but the right can ever be expedient, since that can never be true expediency which would sacrifice a great good to a less.
Richard Whately
Image
It is worth noticing that those who assume an imposing demeanor and seek to pass themselves off for something beyond what they are, are not unfrequently as much underrated by some as overrated by others.
Richard Whately
Image
In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed, we see most dimly the objects which are close around us.
Richard Whately
Image
Eloquence is relative. One can no more pronounce on the eloquence of any composition than the wholesomeness of a medicine, without knowing for whom it is intended.
Richard Whately
Image
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.
Richard Whately
Image
There is no right faith in believing what is true, unless we believe it because it is true.
Richard Whately
Image
All frauds, like the wall daubed with untempered mortar ... always tend to the decay of what they are devised to support.
Richard Whately
Image
Though not always called upon to condemn ourselves, it is always safe to suspect ourselves.
Richard Whately