“The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith; and when the ordinary man calls himself a sceptic or an unbeliever, that is ordinarily a simple pose, cloaking a disinclination to think anything out to a conclusion.”
Introduction to Pascal’s Pensées
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T.S. Eliot 270
20th century English author 1888–1965Related quotes

Letter to Herbert Spencer (22 March 1886); this is often quoted with a variant spelling as: I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything.
1880s
Source: Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley - Volume 1

Ha qualche volta un ortolan parlato
Cose molte a proposito a la gente;
E da un mantel rotto e sporco e stato
Molte volte coperto un uom prudente.
LVIII, 1
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

“No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.”
The Bertrams (1859), Ch. 27

1930s, Wisehart interview (1930)
Context: Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theaters is apt to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.

[Smithsonian Report for 1904, 185–193, Radiation in the solar system, https://books.google.com/books?id=2G1xpr2w4PUC&pg=PA186] (p. 185)

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

“His reasoning was emotional, and therefore simple.”
Source: Time Tunnel (1964), Chapter 8 (p. 102).
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 220.