On the advisableness of improving natural knowledge (1866) http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/thx1410.txt
1860s
Context: The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates hold them; not because their verity is testified by portents and wonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary source, Nature — whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment and to observation — Nature will confirm them. The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
John O'Donohue 44
Irish writer, priest and philosopher 1956–2008Related quotes
As quoted in German Thought, From The Seven Years' War To Goethe's Death : Six Lectures (1880) by Karl Hillebrand, p. 207
“Thus our duties to animals are indirectly duties to humanity.”
Part II, p. 213
Lectures on Ethics (1924)
“I have other duties equally sacred … Duties to myself.”
Nora Helmer, Act III
Variant translation: I have another duty equally sacred … My duty to myself.
A Doll's House (1879)
“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.”
An Apology for Idlers.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
Nobel Banquet Speech
Bk. II, ch. 9.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)
“Legally, the term liberty means absence of duty, or rather the limit of duty.”
Source: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 53
Preface to The Story of the Stone, Vol. 2: 'The Crab-Flower Club' (1979), p. 20