The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.

To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances.

A little reflection will show us that every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions.

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.

No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.

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.

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.

Nor is it that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

There is no scientific discoverer, no poet, no painter, no musician, who will not tell you that he found ready made his discovery or poem or picture - that it came to him from outside, and that he did not consciously create it from within.

If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future.

When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.

Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race.

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.

The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs.

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.

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.

Our lives our guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes.

He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart.

To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

We may always depend on it that algebra, which cannot be translated into good English and sound common sense, is bad algebra.

In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts.

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.

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.

The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.

He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it he has committed it already in his heart.

There is one thing in the world more wicked than the desire to command, and that is the will to obey.

A person's fears are lighter when the danger is at hand.

With the success of the last three or so years, when a lot of people start treating you differently, there's a danger that you may start to think of yourself differently. You rely on your friends to say, 'Hey, wake up!'

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

The best way to avoid danger is to meet it plump.

General Sherman looked upon journalists as a nuisance and a danger at headquarters and in the field, and acted toward them accordingly, then as throughout his great war career.

The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish.

It wouldn't sit easily on one's conscience that you had been warned and there could be danger, but nevertheless you went ahead and said let's dispense these drugs.

By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.

Terrorism is a big danger to Pakistan's independence. We will fight this danger for the sake of independence of Pakistan and will defeat it at all levels.

The United States stands with our friends in Britain as they recover from today's shock of terrorism. These barbaric acts strengthen our resolve and remind us all of the danger of complacency during our continued war on terror.

In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

It is a high patriotic duty that we support and sustain the men who have been placed in position of difficulty, burden, responsibility, and even danger as the result of our suffrages.

Everyone by now presumably knows about the danger of premature optimization. I think we should be just as worried about premature design - designing too early what a program should do.

I did not imagine that the second half of my life would be spent on efforts to avert a mortal danger to humanity created by science.

The proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.

Putin can't afford to leave the office because he will be in real danger of being prosecuted for things he and his people did during their stay in power.

There was never any danger of Business 2.0 ever going under.

We... our war began September the 3rd 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany, and thereafter the great state of danger in England at that time, with the bombings, necessitated the evacuation of children.

The danger of that - and there's a grave danger that I, myself, have to be very aware of - is that you become so involved and intrigued in the language that sometimes you lose track that that is only a means to an aesthetic experience that the listener has to get.

Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.

Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.

The European model is in danger if we obliterate the principle of personal responsibility.