“To me it is far more pleasant to agree than to differ; but it is impossible that one who has any regard for truth can long avoid protesting against doctrines which seem to him to be erroneous. There is ever a tendency of the most hurtful kind to allow opinions to crystallise into creeds.”

— William Stanley Jevons , The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter VIII : Concluding Remarks, The Noxious Influence of Authority, p. 220.
Context: To me it is far more pleasant to agree than to differ; but it is impossible that one who has any regard for truth can long avoid protesting against doctrines which seem to him to be erroneous. There is ever a tendency of the most hurtful kind to allow opinions to crystallise into creeds. Especially does this tendency manifest itself when some eminent author, enjoying power of clear and comprehensive exposition, becomes recognised as an authority. His works may perhaps be the best which are extant upon the subject in question; they may combine more truth with less error than we can elsewhere meet. But "to err is human," and the best works should ever be open to criticism. If, instead of welcoming inquiry and criticism, the admirers of a great author accept his writings as authoritative, both in their excellences and in their defects, the most serious injury is done to truth. In matters of philosophy and science authority has ever been the great opponent of truth. A despotic calm is usually the triumph of error. In the republic of the sciences sedition and even anarchy are beneficial in the long run to the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To me it is far more pleasant to agree than to differ; but it is impossible that one who has any regard for truth can l…" by William Stanley Jevons?

William Stanley Jevons 69

English economist and logician 1835–1882

Related quotes

“I protest against deference to any man, whether John Stuart Mill, or Adam Smith, or Aristotle, being allowed to check inquiry. Our science has become far too much a stagnant one, in which opinions rather than experience and reason are appealed to.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter VIII : Concluding Remarks, The Noxious Influence of Authority, p. 221.

“It is difficult to pronounce on the opinion of the ministers of our Church as a body: one portion of them, by far the least informed, protests against anything which can advance the honour and the interests of science, because, in their limited and mistaken view, science is adverse to religion. This is not the place to argue that great question. It is sufficient to remark, that the best-informed and most enlightened men of all creeds and pursuits, agree that truth can never damage truth, and that every truth is allied indissolubly by chains more or less circuitous with all other truths; whilst error, at every step we make in its diffusion, becomes not only wider apart and more discordant from all truths, but has also the additional chance of destruction from all rival errors.”

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable c…

Source: The Exposition of 1851: Views Of The Industry, The Science, and the Government Of England, 1851, p. 225

“Truth has never been, can never be, contained in any one creed or system.”

Mary Augusta Ward book Robert Elsmere

Robert Elsmere. Book vi. Chap. xxxviii, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“.. I don’t see any point in simply stating something that is easily available. But then that may just be my own psychology, a kind of negative position. It seems to me that if you avoid everything you can avoid, then you do what you can't avoid doing, and you do what is helpless, and unavoidable. That seems to me more interesting than any other position at this moment – for me anyway.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

interview at Johns' studio, Billy Klüver, March 1963, as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 87
1960s

“One of the most remarkable changes was the extent to which indifference had come to prevail in matters of religious opinion. With regard to freedom of action, there would have been a stronger objection then than there was now in allowing the great majority of persons engaged in any particular trade to coerce the minority into their wishes. On the question of non-interference, he pointed out that the difficulties of laissez faire were now far more generally recognized than they were 40 or 50 years ago. For one reason or another there was now far less disposition to accept the doctrines of laissez faire than there was then, and they played a much smaller part in the ideal we formed of what was good for a nation.”

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922) British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician

Speech to the Economic Students' Union at the School of Economics and Political Science, London (14 December 1900), quoted in The Times (17 December 1900), p. 13.
1900s

“Anger is the most impotent of passions. It effects nothing it goes about, and hurts the one who is possessed by it more than the one against whom it is directed.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

“The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.”

Thomas Merton book The Seven Storey Mountain

Source: The Seven Storey Mountain (1948)
Context: Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.

“Everyone admits that "the truth hurts" but no one applies this adage to himself — and as soon as it begins to hurt us, we quickly repudiate it and call it a lie. It is this tendency toward self-deception (more than any active sin) that makes human progress slow and almost imperceptible.”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

On the Contrary (1964)

“Words don't hurt you." Which is one of the hugest criminal lies perpetrated by adults against children in this world. Because words hurt more than any physical pain.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: UnWholly

“The doctrine of toleration requires a positive as well as a negative statement. It is not only wrong to burn a man on account of his creed, but it is right to encourage the open avowal and defence of every opinion sincerely maintained. Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions.”

Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) British author, literary critic, and first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography

The Nineteenth Century, vol. 13 (1883) p. 665

“To me it is far more pleasant to agree than to differ; but it is impossible that one who has any regard for truth can long avoid protesting against doctrines which seem to him to be erroneous. There is ever a tendency of the most hurtful kind to allow opinions to crystallise into creeds.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

William Stanley Jevons 69

Related quotes

Related topics