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
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.
Richard Whately
Image
Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.
Richard Whately
Image
It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
Richard Whately
Image
He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.
Richard Whately
Image
A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.
Richard Whately
Image
The heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true it not only deserved no faith, but it demanded none. The very pretension to truth, the very demand of faith, were characteristic distinctions of Christianity.
Richard Whately
Image
It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another to wish sincerely to be on the side of truth.
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
When a man says he wants to work, what he means is that he wants wages.
Richard Whately
Image
As a science, logic institutes an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning, and investigating the principles on which argumentation is conducted as an art, it furnishes such rules as may be derived from those principles, for guarding against erroneous deductions.
Richard Whately
Image
To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.
Richard Whately
Image
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.
Richard Whately
Image
There is no right faith in believing what is true, unless we believe it because it is true.
Richard Whately
Image
That is suitable to a man, in point of ornamental expense, not which he can afford to have, but which he can afford to lose.
Richard Whately
Image
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.
Richard Whately
Image
If all our wishes were gratified, most of our pleasures would be destroyed.
Richard Whately
Image
Unless people can be kept in the dark, it is best for those who love the truth to give them the full light.
Richard Whately
Image
No one complains of the rules of Grammar as fettering Language because it is understood that correct use is not founded on Grammar, but Grammar on correct use. A just system of Logic or of Rhetoric is analogous, in this respect, to Grammar.
Richard Whately
Image
Proverbs accordingly are somewhat analogous to those medical Formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready-made-up in the chemists’ shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct Prescription.
Richard Whately
Image
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.
Richard Whately