Quote

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

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
May
Barely
Diluted
Children
Deceiving
Sophistry
Would
Volume
Detected
Like
Poison
Stated
World
Sentences
Fallacy
Child
Concentrated
Half
Deceive
Form
Presented
Nauseated

More quotes by 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
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
Image
Of metaphors, those generally conduce most to energy or vivacity of style which illustrate an intellectual by a sensible object.
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
The tendency of party spirit has ever been to disguise and propagate and support error.
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
Though not always called upon to condemn ourselves, it is always safe to suspect ourselves.
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
Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.
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
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
Geologists complain that when they want specimens of the common rocks of a country, they receive curious spars just so, historians give us the extraordinary events and omit just what we want,--the every-day life of each particular time and country.
Richard Whately
Image
The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
Richard Whately
Image
Happiness is no laughing matter.
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
It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary.
Richard Whately
Image
The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it.
Richard Whately
Image
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
Image
It is generally true that all that is required to make men unmindful of what they owe to God for any blessing, is, that they should receive that blessing often and regularly.
Richard Whately
Image
He who is not aware of his ignorance will be only misled by his knowledge.
Richard Whately