“5426. We are apt to believe what we wish for.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“With how much ease believe we what we wish!”
Cleopatra in Act IV, scene I
All for Love (1678)
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John Dryden196
English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century 1631–1700Related quotes
François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs
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
“We are what we think. To change how people act, we must change what they believe.”
Mark Riebling (1963) American writer
His Long War: E Howard Hunt's American Spy (2007)
“What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is its exact opposite.”
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet
This was not Wordsworth's viewpoint at all. The words are in fact those of Bertrand Russell in his Sceptical Essays (1928), p. 157.
Misattributed
“Whether we believe in God depends very much on what we mean by God.”
Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain
Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 23, “A Sunday Sermon” (p. 330)
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet
Source: Julian and Maddalo http://www.bartleby.com/139/shel115.html (1819), l. 14