A biography for William Kingdon Cliffordhasn’t been written yet.
“The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs.”
“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.”
“Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons, we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, of judicially and fairly weighing evidence. We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they lead to, and the evil born when one such belief is entertained is great and wide.”
“We may always depend on it that algebra, which cannot be translated into good English and sound common sense, is bad algebra.”
“It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”
“Nor is it that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it.”
“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.”
“… scientific thought does not mean thought about scientific subjects with long names. There are no scientific subjects. The subject of science is the human universe; that is to say, everything that is, or has been, or may be related to man.”
“He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart.”
“An atmosphere of beliefs and conceptions has been formed by the labours and struggles of our forefathers, which enables us to breathe amid the various and complex circumstances of our life.”
“Namely, we have no right to believe a thing true because everybody says so unless there are good grounds for believing that some one person at least has the means of knowing what is true, and is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.”
“To consider only one other such witness: the followers of the Buddha have at least as much right to appeal to individual and social experience in support of the authority of the Eastern saviour.”
“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.”
“To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”
“Our lives our guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes.”
“We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, then when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn.”
“The rule which should guide us in such cases is simple and obvious enough: that the aggregate testimony of our neighbours is subject to the same conditions as the testimony of any one of them.”
“If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future.”
“There is no scientific discoverer, no poet, no painter, no musician, who will not tell you that he found ready made his discovery or poem or picture - that it came to him from outside, and that he did not consciously create it from within.”
“When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.”