Richard Whately Quotes

91 Sourced Quotes

The easiest and most popular way of practically refuting... any Fallacy is, by bringing forward a parallel case, where it leads to a manifest absurdity. A metaphysical objection may still be urged against many cases in which we thus reason from calculation of chances; an objection not likely indeed practically to influence any one, but which may afford the Sophist a triumph over those who are unable to find a solution.

Richard Whately
He that is not aware of his ignorance, will be only misled by his knowledge.

Richard Whately
Preach not because you have to say something, but because you have something to say.

Richard Whately
It is a folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.

Richard Whately
It is an awful, an appalling thought, that we may be, this moment and every moment, in the presence of malignant spirits.

Richard Whately
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
'Never forget, gentlemen,' he [Whately] said, to his astonished hearers, as he held up a copy of the 'Authorized Version' of the Bible, 'never forget that this is not the Bible,' then, after a moment's pause, he continued, 'This, gentlemen, is only a translation of the Bible.'

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
Concerning the utility of Rhetoric, it is to be observed that it divides itself into two; first, whether Oratorical skill be, on the whole, a public benefit, or evil; and secondly, whether any artificial system of Rules is conducive to the attainment of that skill.

Richard Whately
Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.

Richard Whately
Trite descriptions lose most of their force because they remind us, not of the reality, but of some other description.

Richard Whately
The love of admiration leads to fraud, much more than the love of commendation; but, on the other hand, the latter is much more likely to spoil our: good actions by the substitution of an inferior motive.

Richard Whately
To teach one who has no curiosity to learn, is to sow a field without ploughing it.

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
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
If everyone would record his experiments and observations, science would be much benefited.

Richard Whately
Curiosity is the desire of knowing what is unknown, for that reason alone.

Richard Whately
"A little learning" is then only (and then always) "a dangerous thing," when we are not aware of its littleness.

Richard Whately
Woman is like the reed which bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.

Richard Whately
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
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
The dangers of knowledge are not to be compared with the dangers of ignorance. Man is more likely to miss his way in darkness than in twilight; in twilight than in full sun.

Richard Whately
The censure of frequent and long parentheses has led writers into the preposterous expedient of leaving out the marks by which they are indicated. It is no cure to a lame man to take away his crutches.

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
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
The diligence, candour, and judgment requisite to make a full use of this discoveries of others, are perhaps as rare, and quite as useful, as originality. The flint and steel would be of little use without the tinder and match.

Richard Whately
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.

Richard Whately
Falsehood, like the dry-rot, flourishes the more in proportion as air and light are excluded.

Richard Whately
Neither human applause nor human censure is to be taken as the best of truth; but either should set us upon testing ourselves.

Richard Whately
The analytical method is the best to introduce knowledge, the synthetical to perfect and retain it.

Richard Whately