“I can only say that you must have totally renounced all trust in the operations of the human reason; an attitude which, while it is bad Christianity and also infernal nonsense, is oddly enough bad Positivism too, unless I misunderstand that system.”
Source: Trent's Last Case (1912), Chapter XVI: "The Last Straw"
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Edmund Clerihew Bentley27
British writer 1875–1956Related quotes
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist
"My Six Conversions, § II : When the World Turned Back" in The Wells and the Shallows (1935)
Context: The Church never said that wrongs could not or should not be righted; or that commonwealths could not or should not be made happier; or that it was not worth while to help them in secular and material things; or that it is not a good thing if manners become milder, or comforts more common, or cruelties more rare. But she did say that we must not count on the certainty even of comforts becoming more common or cruelties more rare; as if this were an inevitable social trend towards a sinless humanity; instead of being as it was a mood of man, and perhaps a better mood, possibly to be followed by a worse one. We must not hate humanity, or despise humanity, or refuse to help humanity; but we must not trust humanity; in the sense of trusting a trend in human nature which cannot turn back to bad things.
Michael Dell (1965) Businessman, CEO
ZDNet: "AI shouldn't be held back by scaremongering: Michael Dell" https://www.zdnet.com/article/ai-shouldnt-be-held-back-by-scaremongering-michael-dell/ (02 May 2018)
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman
The Nature of Slavery. Extract from a Lecture on Slavery, at Rochester, December 1, 1850
1850s, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
Interview with the Chicago Times, Feb. 14, 1881.
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) English writer and social critic and a Journalist
Hunted Down http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/hntdn10.txt (1859)
“I do not trust any advice which is given in bad prose.”
Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic
A Voice from the Attic (1960)