Context: It has an unhappy effect upon the human understanding and temper, for a man to be compelled in his gravest investigation of an argument, to consider, not what is true, but what is convenient. The lawyer never yet existed who has not boldly urged an objection which he knew to be fallacious, or endeavoured to pass off a weak reason for a strong one. Intellect is the greatest and most sacred of all endowments; and no man ever trifled with it, defending an action to-day which he had arraigned yesterday, or extenuating an offence on one occasion, which, soon after, he painted in the most atrocious colours, with absolute impunity. Above all, the poet, whose judgment should be clear, whose feelings should be uniform and sound, whose sense should be alive to every impression and hardened to none, who is the legislator of generations and the moral instructor of the world, ought never to have been a practising lawyer, or ought speedily to have quitted so dangerous an engagement.
The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer vol. 1, p. 370 (1803)
Source: The Analects, Chapter III
Attorney-General v. Kerr (1840), 2 Beav. 428.
Quote
“As humans, we reflexively reject arguments that contradict what we would like to be true.”
Source: What's the Worst That Could Happen?: A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate (2009), Chapter 3 "Our Glitchy Brains" (p. 74)
Source: Between Man and Man (1965), p. 147
August 15, 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)
“The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.”
Source: The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Context: For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is. Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up an Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the community from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the other part of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road and encumbering them.
Laver v. Fielder (1862), 32 Beav. 13.
“It’s what a man thinks is true which controls his actions, not what is really true.”
Source: Tomorrow Knight (1976), Chapter 13 (p. 138)
