“We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which however we can find nowhere in his works, that "ridicule is the test of truth."”

— Thomas Carlyle , book Characteristics

Voltaire, Foreign Review, (1829); compare: "How comes it to pass, then, that we appear such cowards in reasoning, and are so afraid to stand the test of ridicule?", Shaftesbury, Characteristics. A Letter concerning Enthusiasm, sect. 2.; "Truth, 't is supposed, may bear all lights; and one of those principal lights or natural mediums by which things are to be viewed in order to a thorough recognition is ridicule itself", Shaftesbury, Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour, sect. 1.; "'T was the saying of an ancient sage [Gorgias Leontinus, apud Aristotle's "Rhetoric," lib. iii. c. 18], that humour was the only test of gravity, and gravity of humour. For a subject which would not bear raillery was suspicious; and a jest which would not bear a serious examination was certainly false wit", ibid. sect. 5.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which h…" by Thomas Carlyle?

Thomas Carlyle 481

Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian… 1795–1881

Related quotes

“It is commonly said, and more particularly by Lord Shaftesbury, that ridicule is the best test of truth.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

6 February 1752
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“And took for truth the test of ridicule.”

George Crabbe (1754–1832) English poet, surgeon, and clergyman

Book viii, "The Sisters".
Tales of the Hall (1819)

“There is, in every event, whether lived or told, always a hole or a gap, often more than one. If we allow ourselves to get caught in it, we find it opening onto a void that, once we have slipped into it, we can never escape.”

Brian Evenson book Fugue State

Source: Fugue State

“If we compare the antiquity and illustrious descent of the dynasties which have ruled, and some which continue to rule, the small sovereignties of Rajasthan, with many of celebrity in Europe, superiority will often attach to the Rajput.”

James Tod (1782–1835) 1782-1835, English officer of the British East India Company and an Oriental scholar

Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan by James Tod

“How can we understand good if we don't know bad and evil? Perhaps therein lies the mystery of human existence. How will the Truth reveal itself. So that people think, that in order to find the truth, humans have to test the true quality of goodness. Because, only from kindness, we will find the real truth.”

Titon Rahmawan

“The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"On Truth" in Damn! A Book of Calumny (1918), p. 53
1910s
Context: The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene swine. Not the laws of the United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it killed the doctrine of infant damnation. But the razor edge of ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the barber-surgeons laughed at Huxley—and how vainly! What clown ever brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Darwin?... They are laughing at Nietzsche yet...