Quote

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

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Richard Whately
Age: 76 †
Born: 1787
Born: February 1
Died: 1863
Died: October 8
Economist
Philosopher
Priest
Theologian
London
England
Leads
Instinct
Blind
Mode
Independent
Agent
Action
Tendency
Ends
Consideration
Part
Tendencies
Agents

More quotes by Richard Whately

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Some men's reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance.
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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.
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As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.
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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.
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All frauds, like the wall daubed with untempered mortar ... always tend to the decay of what they are devised to support.
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The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind.
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Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.
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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
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When men have become heartily wearied of licentious anarchy, their eagerness has been proportionately great to embrace the opposite extreme of rigorous despotism.
Richard Whately
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Christianity, contrasted with the Jewish system of emblems, is truth in the sense of reality, as substance is opposed to shadows, and, contrasted with heathen mythology, is truth as opposed to falsehood.
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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
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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.
Richard Whately
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The tendency of party spirit has ever been to disguise and propagate and support error.
Richard Whately
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Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.
Richard Whately
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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.
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
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He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.
Richard Whately
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Some persons follow the dictates of their conscience only in the same sense in which a coachman may be said to follow the horses he is driving.
Richard Whately
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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.
Richard Whately
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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