Richard Whately Quotes

I don't have to have faith, I have experience.

[It's] troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that's often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.

The typical person has no trouble believing without knowing. What people need to realize is simply that you do not need to believe to know.

Suspecting and knowing are not the same.

Belief sometimes precedes understanding; faith sometimes precedes scientific evidence.

Belief is not the beginning of knowledge - it is the end.

The things of which we want the proof are those we know the best.

Seeing is believing and believing is knowing and knowing beats unknowing and the unknown.

If all you have is faith, then you never actually know anything.

Let one persuade many, and he becomes confirmed and convinced, and cares for no better evidence.

A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proved.

A thing that nobody believes cannot be proved too often.

You don't believe that the Earth is round only if you're an astronaut. You don't believe Napoleon existed only if you're a historian. You believe these things because they're facts, proved by evidence.

I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.

A great deal more is known than has been proved.

Knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith.

I don't want to believe. I want to know.

Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.

Do you know because I tell you so, or do you know, do you know.

Argument is conclusive, but it does not remove doubt, so that the mind may rest in the sure knowledge of the truth, unless it finds it by the method of experiment.

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.

Faith is an island in the setting sun, But proof is the bottom line for everyone.

Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated.

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.

Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.