Infallible Quotes
More Infallible Quotes
For each of the four hundred and four bodily ailments celebrated physicians have produced infallible remedies, but the malady which brings the greatest distress to mankind — to even the wisest and cleverest of us — is the plague of poverty.
ihara saikaku— Book III, ch. 1
The "through-and-through" universe seems to suffocate me with its infallible impeccable all-pervasiveness. Its necessity , with no possibilities; its relations, with no subjects, make me feel as if I had entered into a contract with no reserved rights ... It seems too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a thing to speak for the vast slow-breathing unconscious Kosmos with its dread abysses and its unknown tides.
william james— Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912), Ch. 12 : Absolutism and Empiricism
What you have to watch out for are the theories that claim to be infallible. Because the only way their believers can win is to stomp out everyone who disagrees with them.
— "When Worlds (and Particles) Collide". Notes from the Field (InfoWorld). September 12, 2008. Retrieved on 2009-08-06.
Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.
wystan hugh auden— 1963 The Dyer's Hand,'Reading'.
The only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgementssuccess.
Edmund Burke— 1791Letter to a Member of the National Assembly.
Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
Edward Gibbon— 1776-88 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch.21.
We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.
Peter Jackson— 1953 Ruling to uphold the Supreme Court as the bench of last appeal, 9 Feb.
Could she not obtain from him the promise to discharge his weapon in the air, if the duel was with pistols, or, if it was with swords, simply to disarm his enemy?Like nearly all persons unversed in the art, she believed in infallible fencers, in marksmen who never missed their aim, and she had also ideas profoundly, absolutely inexact on the relations of one man with another in the matter of an insult.
paul bourget— Ch. 7 "A Little Relative of Iago"
Truth indeed is sacred; but, as Pilate said, "What is truth?" Show us the undoubted infallible criterion of absolute truth, and we will hold it as a sacred inviolable thing. But in the absence of that infallible criterion, we have all an equal right to grope about in our search of it, and no body and no school nor clique must be allowed to set up a standard of orthodoxy which shall bar the freedom of scientific inquiry.
william stanley jevons— Chapter VIII : Concluding Remarks, The Noxious Influence of Authority, p. 220
Regardless of nationality, all men are brothers. God is "our Father who art in heaven." The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" is unconditional and inexorable. … The lowly Nazarene taught us the doctrine of non-resistance, and so convinced was he of the soundness of that doctrine that he sealed his belief with death on the cross. … When human law conflicts with Divine law, my duty is clear. Conscience, my infallible guide, impels me to tell you that prison, death, or both, are infinitely preferable to joining any branch of the Army.
ben salmon— Letter To President Wilson (June 5, 1917) by Ben Salmon
The only infallible rule we know is, that the man who is always talking about being a gentleman never is one.
Robert Smith Surtees— Ask Mamma (1858) ch. 1
This is the end of spoon-fed orthodoxy and infallible institutions, and the rise of messy mosaics of information that require and reward investigation.
chris anderson— Ch. 11, p. 190
Now the Faith is old and the Devil is bold, Exceedingly bold indeed; And the masses of doubt that are floating about Would smother a mortal creed. But we that sit in a sturdy youth, And still can drink strong ale, Oh let us put it away to infallible truth, That always shall prevail. ? [semi-chorus:] And thank the Lord For the temporal sword, And howling heretics too; And all good things Our Christendom brings, But especially barley brew!
hilaire belloc— the "Pelagian" drinking song, p. 50
If you want to know what's shortly due for the guillotine look for the most obvious of all symptoms: extremism . It is an almost infallible sign a kind of death-rattle when a human institution is forced by its members into stressing those and only those factors which are identificatory, at the expense of others which it necessarily shares with competing institutions because human beings belong to all of them.
john brunner— context (12) "The Sociological Counterpart of Cheyne-Stokes Respiration"
Good government is known from bad government by this infallible test: that under the former the labouring people are well fed and well clothed, and under the latter, they are badly fed and badly clothed.
william cobbett— Political Register, XLVI, pp. 513-514 (31 May 1823)
The religions are delusional constructs formed around an infallible core.
frederick franck— p. 74 (Echoes from the Bottomless Well (1985))
Conclusions which are merely verbal cannot bear fruit, only those do which are based on demonstrated fact. For affirmation and talk are deceptive and treacherous. Wherefore one must hold fast to facts in generalizations also, and occupy oneself with facts persistently, if one is to acquire that ready and infallible habit which we call "the art of medicine."
hippocrates— Precepts, Ch. 2, as translated by W. H. S. Jones (1923).
Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact; it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors.
David Hume— Section 10 : Of Miracles Pt. 1
In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty; and it is certain, that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds, on which it is commonly founded; and, by an infallible connexion, which prevails among all kinds of liberty, this privilege can never be enjoyed, at least has never yet been enjoyed, but in a free government.
David Hume— Essay 9 : Of The Parties of Great Britain
Reversal by a higher court is not proof that justice is thereby better done. There is no doubt that if there were a super-Supreme Court, a substantial proportion of our reversals of state courts would also be reversed. We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.
robert h. jackson— Brown v. Allen, 344 U.S. 443, 540 (1953) (concurring).
A decision, an action, are infallible omens of what we shall do another time, not for any vague, mystic, astrological reason but because they result from an automatic reaction that will repeat itself.
cesare pavese— 1941-04-04
The nearest approach to the infallible in literary judgment is represented in the colossal work of the teacher of all these three [Edmund Gosse, Edward Dowden and George Saintsbury], the greatest critic that ever lived – not an Englishman, but a Frenchman, the wonderful Sainte-Beuve.
charles augustin sainte-beuve— Lafcadio Hearn Life and Literature (1917; Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger, 2005) p. 82
Regardless of nationality, all men are brothers. God is "our Father who art in heaven ." The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" is unconditional and inexorable. … The lowly Nazarene taught us the doctrine of non-resistance, and so convinced was he of the soundness of that doctrine that he sealed his belief with death on the cross. … When human law conflicts with Divine law, my duty is clear. Conscience, my infallible guide, impels me to tell you that prison, death, or both, are infinitely preferable to joining any branch of the Army.
— Ben Salmon, in a Letter To President Wilson (June 5, 1917)
the weapon which has proved infallible for me
— Gandhi, quoted by Dennis Dalton reported that on 1 September 1947, Gandhi decided to hold an indefinite fast till the rioting stopped though he understood that “an appearance before a yelling crowd does not always work”, in p.47
The passions are the only orators that always persuade: they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it.
— François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims. No. 9.
The persuasive techniques used by totalist cults to bind and exploit the members, while not magical or infallible, are sufficiently powerful and effective to assure the recruitment of a significant percentage of those approached, and the retention of a significant percentage of those enlisted.
— Louis Jolyon West "Persuasive Techniques in Religious Cults," in: Marc Galanter (1989) Cults and New Religious Movements. p. 4
If you want to know what's shortly due for the guillotine look for the most obvious of all symptoms: extremism. It is an almost infallible sign a kind of death-rattle when a human institution is forced by its members into stressing those and only those factors which are identificatory, at the expense of others which it necessarily shares with competing institutions because human beings belong to all of them.
john brunner— John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar (1968), context (12) "The Sociological Counterpart of Cheyne-Stokes Respiration".
A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then, again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revaluation of prominent historical figures.
— George Orwell, "The Prevention of Literature", Polemic (January 1946)
Dissent... is a right essential to any concept of the dignity and freedom of the individual; it is essential to the search for truth in a world wherein no authority is infallible.
— Norman Thomas, as quoted in The Quotable Rebel (2005) by Teishan Latner, p. 360.
