“Conviction without experience makes for harshness.”

Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Conviction without experience makes for harshness." by Flannery O’Connor?
Flannery O’Connor photo
Flannery O’Connor 82
American novelist, short story writer 1925–1964

Related quotes

Will Rogers photo

“See they conducted experiments on convicts”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Nationally syndicated column number 31, A Few Shots of Scopolamin (15 July 1923), after meeting Robert E. House, who had proposed the use of scopolamine as a truth serum, in The Use of Scopolamine in Criminology (1922).
Weekly columns
Context: See they conducted experiments on convicts... I don't know on what grounds they reason a man in jail is a bigger liar than one out of jail... The chances are telling the truth is what got him there... It would be a big aid to humanity, but it will never be, for already the politicians are up in arms against it... It would wreck the very foundation on which our political government is run... If you ever injected truth into politics you'd have no politics … Even the ministers are denouncing it now … Humanity is not yet ready for either real truth or real harmony.

“Convince me, but without convictions. Convictions no longer convince me.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Voces (1943)

Dag Hammarskjöld photo

“Never, "for the sake of peace and quiet," deny your own experience or convictions.”

Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961) Swedish diplomat, economist, and author

Markings (1964)

“There is no authority for God’s existence except the inward conviction that is born of mystical experience.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.72

John P. Kotter photo

“Without conviction that you can make change happen, you will not act, even if you see the vision. Your feelings will hold you back.”

John P. Kotter (1947) author of The heart of Change

Step 5, p. 115
The Heart of Change, (2002)

Carl Sagan photo
Immanuel Kant photo

“Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

This is declared to be "an old Kantian maxim" in General Systems Vol. 7-8 (1962)‎, p. 11, by the Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory, but may simply be a paraphrase or summation of Kantian ideas.
Kant's treatment of the transcendental logic in the First Critique contains a portion, of which this quote may be an ambiguously worded paraphrase. Kant, claiming that both reason and the senses are essential to the formation of our understanding of the world, writes: "Without sensibility no object would be given to us, and without understanding none would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind (A51/B75)".
Disputed

Keiji Inafune photo

“It's very severe, but very honest. Unless Japanese people feel embarrassed from the experience of getting harsh comments, saying [new games] could have been better is not an opinion they would take seriously. When they're embarrassed and they feel obliged to change, it would make a difference.”

Keiji Inafune (1965) Japanese video game designer

Source: "Q&A: Mega Man Creator Wants Japan to Admit Failure" https://www.wired.com/2012/04/keiji-inafune-qa/. WIRED. Retrieved 2018-07-15.

Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
James Russell Lowell photo

Related topics