“Credulity, sectarianism, and sloth are three natural tendencies of man. Too often he canonizes them under nobler names.”
Source: Paradoxes of Faith (1987), Ch. II. "Christianity", p. 21
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Henri de Lubac16
Jesuit theologian and cardinal 1896–1991Related quotes
Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
Richard Maurice Bucke (1837–1902) prominent Canadian psychiatrist in the late 19th century
Source: Man's Moral Nature (1879), Ch. 1 : Lines of Cleavage
Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786) king of Prussia
Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), trans. Richard Aldington, letter 37 from Frederick to Voltaire (June 1738)
Upton Sinclair book The Profits of Religion
Book Two : The Church of Good Society, "The Canonization of Incompetence"
The Profits of Religion (1918)
Francis Bacon book Essays
Of Studies
Essays (1625)
Context: To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning, by study; and studies themselves, do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.
William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher
The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Duty of Inquiry
Context: 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. Habitual want of care about what I believe leads to habitual want of care in others about the truth of what is told to me. Men speak the truth of one another when each reveres the truth in his own mind and in the other's mind; but how shall my friend revere the truth in my mind when I myself am careless about it, when I believe thing because I want to believe them, and because they are comforting and pleasant? Will he not learn to cry, "Peace," to me, when there is no peace? By such a course I shall surround myself with a thick atmosphere of falsehood and fraud, and in that I must live. It may matter little to me, in my cloud-castle of sweet illusions and darling lies; but it matters much to Man that I have made my neighbours ready to deceive. The credulous man is father to the liar and the cheat; he lives in the bosom of this his family, and it is no marvel if he should become even as they are.