Philip Sidney Quotes

Kant thought things, not because they were true, but because he was Kant.

The man who accepts opinions because they have been entertained by distinguished people, is a mental snob.

If you organize your life around some political party's list of things you should believe, or an individual that you think is going to come and save you, you are disconnecting yourself from truth. And there is a price to pay.

You can always get someone to do your thinking for you.

A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt.

The accidental prescriptions of authority, when time has procured them veneration, are often confounded with the laws of nature, and those rules are supposed coeval with reason, of which the first rise cannot be discovered.

Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry.

They who see through the eyes of others are controlled by the will of others.

Can there be any greater dotage in the world than for one to guide and direct his courses by the sound of a bell, and not by his own judgment.

Those who speak of blind obedience may appear to know many things, but they do not understand the doctrines of the gospel. There is an obedience that comes from a knowledge of the truth that transcends any external form of control. We are not obedient because we are blind, we are obedient because we can see.

Don't hold strong opinions about things you don't truly understand.

Frankly, I’m suspicious of anyone who has a strong opinion on a complicated issue.

Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.

However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.

When your opinions start to coincide with those of the majority, it is time to reconsider your opinions.

There is nothing so wrong as accepting a thing merely because men who have done things say it should be so.

It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can raise the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them.

In a discussion of this kind our interest should be centered not on the weight of the authority but on the weight of the argument. Indeed the authority of those who set out to teach is often an impediment to those who wish to learn. They cease to use their own judgment and regard as gospel whatever is put forward by their chosen teacher.

Most of our fellow-subjects are guided either by the prejudice of education or by a deference to the judgment of those who perhaps in their own hearts disapprove the opinions which they industriously spread among the multitude.

They dispute not in order to find or even to seek Truth, but for victory, and to appear the more learned and strenuous upholders of a contrary opinion. Such persons should be avoided by all who have not a good breastplate of patience.

I don't have an opinion about whether or not politics should appear more in fiction or not, generally. I think politics are a part of life, but a part of life that most people don't think about very much, most of the time. Or, people think about it superficially and they talk about it superficially because they don't know very much.

In the word of no master am I bound to believe.

One of the greatest dangers is secular religion - state worship.

There is a very real evil consequent on ascribing supernatural origin to the received maxilms of morality. That origin consecrates the whole of them and protects them from being discussed or criticized.

O charitable philosopher, I beg you to help me. My mind is weak but my soul is strong. Kindle that soul, and the sacred fire shall never be extinguished.