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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

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Richard Whately
Age: 76 †
Born: 1787
Born: February 1
Died: 1863
Died: October 8
Economist
Philosopher
Priest
Theologian
London
England
Upon
Truth
Best
Censure
Human
Applause
Humans
Testing
Neither
Either
Taken

More quotes by Richard Whately

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He who is not aware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Ethical maxims are bandied about as a sort of current coin of discourse, and, being never melted down for use, those that are of base metal are never detected.
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Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved.
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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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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.
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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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The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.
Richard Whately
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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.
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To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air.
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Woman is like the reed which bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.
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The tendency of party spirit has ever been to disguise and propagate and support error.
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Honesty is the best policy but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.
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Though not always called upon to condemn ourselves, it is always safe to suspect ourselves.
Richard Whately
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All gaming, since it implies a desire to profit at the expense of another, involves a breach of the tenth commandment.
Richard Whately
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Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.
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When a man says he wants to work, what he means is that he wants wages.
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Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.
Richard Whately