It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
Interpretation
Believing things without enough evidence is universally incorrect.
This quote emphasizes the importance of rational thinking and evidence-based beliefs. It argues that accepting ideas or truths without sufficient evidence undermines the integrity of knowledge and understanding, and suggests that this principle is applicable universally, regardless of context or individual.
In practice
Introducing a discussion on the importance of critical thinking in a classroom setting.
The aim of scientific thought, then, is to apply past experience to new circumstances; the instrument is an observed uniformity in the course of events. By the use of this instrument it gives us information transcending our experience, it enables us to infer things that we have not seen from things that we have seen; and the evidence for the truth of that information depends on our supposing that the uniformity holds good beyond our experience.
Remember that [scientific thought] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.
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.
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.
We may always depend on it that algebra, which cannot be translated into good English and sound common sense, is bad algebra.
If I have advocated the cause of the Negro, it is not because I am a Negro, but because I am a man.
It is still fashionable to believe that how you organize yourself religiously in this life may matter for eternity. Unless we can erode the prestige of that kind of thinking, we're not going to be able to undermine these divisions in our world.
Good Morning!β said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat. βWhat do you mean?β he said. βDo you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?
Surely, nothing can be more dangerous than the doctrine that the moral obligations of men change with the latitude and longitude of a place.
As to gods, I have no way of knowing either that they exist or do not exist, or what they are like.
We should show life neither as it is or as it ought to be, but only as we see it in our dreams.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.