William Kingdon Clifford

This is why we ought not to do evil that good may come; for at any rate this great evil has come, that we have done evil and are made wicked thereby.

Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons, we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, of judicially and fairly weighing evidence.

But if the belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence, the pleasure is a stolen one.

This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation.

It is the sense of power attached to a sense of knowledge that makes men desirous of believing, and afraid of doubting.

To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances.

It leaves us bare and powerless where we thought that we were safe and strong.

It is true that this duty is a hard one, and the doubt which comes out of it is often a very bitter thing.

Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his belief with a very fanaticism of jealous care, lest at any time it should rest on an unworthy object, and catch a stain which can never be wiped away.

But I cannot help doing this great wrong toward Man, that I make myself credulous.

In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts.

There is always a suggestion of some sort, either the end of a train of thought or a new sensation; and there is an action ensuing, either the movement of a muscle or set of muscles, or the fixing of attention upon something.

There it is worse than presumption to believe.

It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence.

We may believe the statement of another person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.

We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know.

We have no reason to fear lest a habit of conscientious inquiry should paralyze the actions of our daily life.

It is our duty to act upon probabilities, although the evidence is not such as to justify present belief.

The beliefs about right and wrong which guide our actions in dealing with men in society, and the beliefs about physical nature which guide our actions in dealing with animate and inanimate bodies, these never suffer from investigation; they can take care of themselves.