Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), I. On Confidence
“Economics, said Mr Stanley, is 50% psychology … What we need, apparently, is not statesman but hypnotists, not scientists, but witchdoctors, not confidence born of scientific prediction of the future, but confidence created by a political Confidence Trick. There is nothing surprising in this. It is the kind of mystic Mumbo-Jumbo to which capitalism is driven when austere reason pronounces sentence of death upon it. It is the primitive recoil from reality and the burdens of reality which lies at the root of Fascist psychology.”
Tribune, 5 November 1937
1930s
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Aneurin Bevan 33
Welsh politician 1897–1960Related quotes
“There is a sense in which all law is nothing more nor less than a gigantic confidence trick.”
Speech to Devon Magistrates, The Times 12 April 1972.
State of the Art (2000)
Source: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
“We don’t need self-confidence we need God-confidence”
“Our slogan is Australia Unlimited, and we pronounce it with confidence.”
Election speech, Canterbury, Victoria, 29 October, 1958 https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1958-robert-menzies
Second Term as Prime Minister (1949-1966)
Speech in Leeds (23 November 1900), quoted in The Times (24 November 1900), p. 8
Opposition MP
Attributed to Laozi in self-help books and on social media, this quotation is of unknown origin and date.
Misattributed
The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (2005).
Context: My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation: if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.