Henry Fielding Quotes

Custom is often only the antiquity of error.

Custom is the plague of wise men and the idol of fools.

The more respect that objects, customs, or laws are given, the more attentively you must question the right these things have to this respect.

Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course.

Customs may not be as wise as laws, but they are always more popular.

Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.

fair play is less characteristic of groups than of individuals.

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.

Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes.

The majority never has right on its side.

Obviously, I believe in clean sport and want to do all that I can, but at the same time, you can only control yourself.

Nature is seldom in the wrong, custom always.

We do everything by custom, even believe by it; our very axioms, let us boast of free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such beliefs as we have never heard questioned.

Stand up to hypocrisy. If you don't, the hypocrites will teach. Stand up to ignorance, because if you don't, the ignorant will run free to spread ignorance like a disease.

One may as well preach a respectable mythology as anything else.

Do not act following customary beliefs.

Necessity may render a doubtful act innocent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy

The customs of the world are so many conventional follies.

If one asks the whence derives the authority of fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence.

In my day, there were things that were done, and things that were not done, and there was even a way of doing things that were not done.

Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course. Piracy, for example, is a tradition that has been carried on for hundreds of years, but that doesn't mean we should all attack ships and steal their gold.

Customs represent the experience of mankind.

Demean thyself more warily in thy study than in the street. If thy public actions have a hundred witnesses, thy private have a thousand. The multitude looks but upon thy actions; thy conscience looks into them: the multitude may chance to excuse thee, if not acquit thee; thy conscience will accuse thee, if not condemn thee.