“None are so likely to believe too little as those who have begun by believing too much.”
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IV : The Essence of Catholicism
Context: ... as the great Unitarian preacher Channing pointed out, that in France and Spain there are multitudes who have proceeded from rejecting Popery to absolute atheism, because "the fact is, that false and absurd doctrines, when exposed, have a natural tendency to beget skepticism in those who receive them without reflection. None are so likely to believe too little as those who have begun by believing too much." Here is, indeed, the terrible danger of believing too much. But no! the terrible danger comes from another quarter — from seeking to believe with the reason and not with the life.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Miguel de Unamuno 199
19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher 1864–1936Related quotes
New York Times (2 February 1986).
“Sometimes my mouth is a little too big and a little too open and sounds too much like a sailor.”
From a letter to his father, quoted in George MacDonald and His Wife (1924) by Greville MacDonald
Context: I firmly believe people have hitherto been a great deal too much taken up about doctrine and far too little about practice. The word doctrine, as used in the Bible, means teaching of duty, not theory. I preached a sermon about this. We are far too anxious to be definite and to have finished, well-polished, sharp-edged systems — forgetting that the more perfect a theory about the infinite, the surer it is to be wrong, the more impossible it is to be right.
“Dignity is like morality,” Mirabilis barked. “Too much is as bad as too little.”
Source: The Native Star (2010), Chapter 20, “The Otherwhere Marble” (p. 274)
" JOSHUA HOMME: “IT DOESN'T MATTER IF IT’S BEEN SAID, IT’S NEVER BEEN SAID BY ME” http://www.antiquiet.com/news/2010/09/josh-homme-interview-zane-lowe/", Antiquet (August 27th, 2009)
“What is too absurd to believe is believed because it is too absurd to be a lie.”
Sebban Balwer
(15 October 1994)
Source: Lord of Chaos
“Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed.”