We may always depend on it that algebra, which cannot be translated into good English and sound common sense, is bad algebra. William Kingdon Clifford Read Quote
Namely, we have no right to believe a thing true because everybody says so unless there are good grounds for believing that some one person at least has the means of knowing what is true, and is speaking the truth so far as he knows it. William Kingdon Clifford Read Quote
The rule which should guide us in such cases is simple and obvious enough: that the aggregate testimony of our neighbours is subject to the same conditions as the testimony of any one of them. William Kingdon Clifford Read Quote
An atmosphere of beliefs and conceptions has been formed by the labours and struggles of our forefathers, which enables us to breathe amid the various and complex circumstances of our life. William Kingdon Clifford Read Quote
To consider only one other such witness: the followers of the Buddha have at least as much right to appeal to individual and social experience in support of the authority of the Eastern saviour. William Kingdon Clifford Read Quote
If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done from the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest. William Kingdon Clifford Read Quote
This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation. William Kingdon Clifford Read Quote
We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, then when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn. William Kingdon Clifford Read Quote
Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. A awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live. William Kingdon Clifford Read Quote
Our lives our guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes. William Kingdon Clifford Read Quote
