English - Mathematician | May 4, 1845 - March 3, 1879
If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future.
William Kingdon Clifford
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Our lives our guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes.
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Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. A awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live.
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To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances.
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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.
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To consider only one other such witness: the followers of the Buddha have at least as much right to appeal to individual and social experience in support of the authority of the Eastern saviour.
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The rule which should guide us in such cases is simple and obvious enough: that the aggregate testimony of our neighbours is subject to the same conditions as the testimony of any one of them.
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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.
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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.
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We may always depend on it that algebra, which cannot be translated into good English and sound common sense, is bad algebra.
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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.
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It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
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