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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.
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
Action
Tendency
Ends
Consideration
Part
Tendencies
Agents
Leads
Instinct
Blind
Mode
Independent
Agent
More quotes by Richard Whately
All gaming, since it implies a desire to profit at the expense of another, involves a breach of the tenth commandment.
Richard Whately
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
The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind.
Richard Whately
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
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.
Richard Whately
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
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
Everyone wishes to have truth on his side, but not everyone wishes to be on the side of truth.
Richard Whately
The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.
Richard Whately
Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.
Richard Whately
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
As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.
Richard Whately
Of all hostile feelings, envy is perhaps the hardest to be subdued, because hardly any one owns it even to himself, but looks out for one pretext after another to justify his hostility.
Richard Whately
It is also important to guard against mistaking for good-nature what is properly good-humor,--a cheerful flow of spirits and easy temper not readily annoyed, which is compatible with great selfishness.
Richard Whately
All frauds, like the wall daubed with untempered mortar ... always tend to the decay of what they are devised to support.
Richard Whately
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
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
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
Richard Whately
He that is not open to conviction is not qualified for discussion.
Richard Whately
Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.
Richard Whately
