Credulity
is a state of willingness to believe in one or many people or things in the absence of reasonable proof or
knowledge
. Credulity is not simply
belief
in something that may be
false
. The subject of the belief may even be correct, but a credulous person will believe it without good
evidence
.
- The wealthy obtain in Paris ready-made wit and science?formulated opinions which save them the need of having wit, science, or opinion of their own.
- What is
history
, after all, but the record of the periodical
crusades
for or against some bogey which believing men have evolved out of their credulity and
fear
?
- Ernest Boyd in: Raymond Woodbury Pence
Essays of Today
, Macmillan, 1935, p. 94
- 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
.
- Tell people there's an
invisible
man in the
sky
who created the
universe
, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the
paint
is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.
- The most imaginative people are the most credulous, for them everything is possible.
- If I let myself believe anything on insufficient
evidence
, there may be no great
harm
done by the mere
belief
; it may be
true
after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great
wrong
towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to
society
is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.
- When people are bewildered they tend to become credulous.
- There are new
words
now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a
truth
to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.
- It may be a very
happy
state and a little credulity helps one on through
life
very smoothly.- Better than always doubting and doubting, and seeing difficulties and disagreeables in everything.
- The credulity of the
church
is decreasing, and the most marvelous
miracles
are not either 'explained,' or allowed to take refuge behind the
mistakes
of the translators, or hide in the drapery of
allegory
.
- The natural cause of the human
mind
is certainly from credulity to
skepticism
.
- Credulity is the common failing of inexperienced
virtue
; and he who is spontaneously suspicious may justly be charged with radical
corruption
.
- There are indeed, in the present
corruption
of
mankind
, many incitements to forsake
truth
: the need of palliating our own
faults
and the convenience of imposing on the
ignorance
or credulity of others so frequently occur; so many immediate
evils
are to be avoided, and so many present gratifications obtained, by craft and
delusion
that very few of those who are much entangled in
life
have
spirit
and constancy sufficient to support in the steady practice of open veracity.
- Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's
strength
.
- The history of credulity would be the most singular page in the great history of mankind. From those vast beliefs which have founded religions and empires, down to the inventions that garnish the last new murder, there has always been a tendency in the human mind to believe with as little expense of the reasoning faculty as possible.
- Letitia Elizabeth Landon
in 'The Female Portrait Gallery. No.5. Miss Wardour.', published 1841 in Literary Remains, by Laman Blanchard.
- A little
doubt
is better than total credulity.
- I will not avoid doing what I think is right, though it should draw on me the whole artillery that
falsehood
and
malice
can invent, or the credulity a deluded population can swallow.
- One man received a thought and accepted it without examination. Another received a thought and tested its truth. Which of them acted with greater reverence?
- How I suffered when I had to
preach
to you those
pious
lies
that I detest in my
heart
. What
remorse
your credulity caused me! A thousand times I was on the point of breaking out publicly and opening your
eyes
, but a fear stronger than myself held me back, and forced me to keep
silence
until my
death
.
- The man who is free from credulity, but knows the uncreated, who has cut all ties, removed all
temptations
, renounced all
desires
, he is the greatest of men.
- One of the peculiar
sins
of the twentieth century which we've developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in
God
they believe in nothing. The
truth
is much worse: they believe in anything.
- I myself am convinced that the
theory
of
evolution
, especially to the extent to which it has been applied, will be one of the greatest jokes in the
history
books
of the
future
. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an
hypothesis
could be accepted with the incredible credulity it has.
- Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all
mental
woes
can be cured by a daily application of old
Greek myths
to their private parts.
- One would think that a system loaded with such gross and vulgar absurdities as
Scripture
religion
is could never have obtained
credit
; yet we have seen what priest craft and
fanaticism
can do, and credulity believe.
- I prefer credulity to
skepticism
and
cynicism
for there is more promise in almost anything than in nothing at all
- Man is a credulous
animal
, and must
believe
something; in the absence of good grounds for
belief
, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
- The raising of
storms
by
witches
is attested by so many, that I think it needless to recite them. The theologian
Meric Casaubon
argued ? in his 1668 book Of "Credulity and Incredulity", that witches must exist because, after all, everyone believes in them. Anything that a large number of people believe must be
true
.
- The math is dead simple: it seems that the frequency of
planets
able to support
life
is roughly one percent. In other words, a billion or more such worlds exist in our
galaxy
alone. That's a lot of acreage, and it takes industrial-strength credulity to believe it's all bleakly barren.
- The
New Age movement
looks like a mixed bag. I see much in it that seems good: It's optimistic; it's enthusiastic; it has the capacity for
belief
. On the debit side, I think one needs to distinguish between belief and credulity.
- You must not know too much or be too precise or
scientific
about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin, and even vagueness -
ignorance
, credulity - helps your
enjoyment
of these things.
- Women suffer more from disappointment than men, because they have more of
faith
and are naturally more credulous.
- Some jerk infected the
Internet
with an outright
lie
. It shows how easy it is to do and how credulous people are.
- If elephants didn’t exist, you couldn’t invent one. They belong to a small group of living things so unlikely they challenge credulity and common sense. Compared to them, we are primitive, hanging on to a stubborn, unspecialised, five-fingered state, clever but destructive. They are models of refinement, nature’s archangels, the oldest and largest land mammals, touchstones to our imagination
- Credulity is
belief
in slight
evidence
, with no evidence, or against evidence.