“The goodness and greatness of a man do not justify us in accepting a belief upon the warrant of his authority, unless there are reasonable grounds for supposing that he knew the truth of what he was saying. And there can be no grounds for supposing that a man knows that which we, without ceasing to be men, could not be supposed to verify.”

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Weight Of Authority

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William Kingdon Clifford 48
English mathematician and philosopher 1845–1879

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