
“We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.”
Letter to Mrs William Froude, 27 June 1848.
Remarks on The Constitution of Liberty by F. A. Hayek during a visit to the Conservative Research Department (summer 1975), quoted in John Ranelagh, Thatcher's People (London: HarperCollins, 1991), p. ix.
Leader of the Opposition
“We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.”
Letter to Mrs William Froude, 27 June 1848.
“What we believe is heavily influenced by what we think others believe”
Source: How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life
1960s, Inaugural address (1965)
Context: In each generation, with toil and tears, we have had to earn our heritage again. If we fail now, we shall have forgotten in abundance what we learned in hardship: that democracy rests on faith, that freedom asks more than it gives, and that the judgment of God is harshest on those who are most favored. If we succeed, it will not be because of what we have, but it will be because of what we are; not because of what we own, but, rather because of what we believe. For we are a nation of believers. Underneath the clamor of building and the rush of our day's pursuits, we are believers in justice and liberty and union, and in our own Union. We believe that every man must someday be free. And we believe in ourselves.
Ce qui nous fait croire si facilement que les autres ont des défauts, c'est la facilité que l'on a de croire ce qu'on souhaite.
Variant translation: What makes us believe so easily that others have faults is the ease with which we believe what we hope for.
Maxim 25 from the Manuscrit de Liancourt.
Later Additions to the Maxims
“The Master is not concerned with what we believe — only with what we see.”
Non-Instruction
One Minute Wisdom (1989)
Source: The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge
The Crown of Wild Olive, lecture IV: The Future of England, section 151 (1866).