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A little reflection will show us that every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions.
William Kingdon Clifford
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William Kingdon Clifford
Age: 33 †
Born: 1845
Born: May 4
Died: 1879
Died: March 3
Mathematician
Philosopher
University Teacher
W. K. Clifford
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More quotes by William Kingdon Clifford
We may always depend on it that algebra, which cannot be translated into good English and sound common sense, is bad algebra.
William Kingdon Clifford
scientific thought does not mean thought about scientific subjects with long names. There are no scientific subjects. The subject of science is the human universe that is to say, everything that is, or has been, or may be related to man.
William Kingdon Clifford
The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them for then it must sink back into savagery.
William Kingdon Clifford
No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.
William Kingdon Clifford
We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, then when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn.
William Kingdon Clifford
Remember that [scientific thought] is the guide of action that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.
William Kingdon Clifford
When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.
William Kingdon Clifford
An atmosphere of beliefs and conceptions has been formed by the labours and struggles of our forefathers, which enables us to breathe amid the various and complex circumstances of our life.
William Kingdon Clifford
Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race.
William Kingdon Clifford
Thought is powerless, except it make something outside of itself: the thought which conquers the world is not contemplative but active.
William Kingdon Clifford
Our lives our guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes.
William Kingdon Clifford
Namely, we have no right to believe a thing true because everybody says so unless there are good grounds for believing that some one person at least has the means of knowing what is true, and is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.
William Kingdon Clifford
The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs.
William Kingdon Clifford
The scientific discovery appears first as the hypothesis of an analogy and science tends to become independent of the hypothesis.
William Kingdon Clifford
There is no scientific discoverer, no poet, no painter, no musician, who will not tell you that he found ready made his discovery or poem or picture — that it came to him from outside, and that he did not consciously create it from within.
William Kingdon Clifford
An atom must be at least as complex as a grand piano.
William Kingdon Clifford
If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done from the mere transfer of possession he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest.
William Kingdon Clifford
There is one thing in the world more wicked than the desire to command, and that is the will to obey.
William Kingdon Clifford
He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart.
William Kingdon Clifford
All our liberties are due to men who, when their conscience has compelled them, have broken the laws of the land.
William Kingdon Clifford
