A Quote by Isaac Watts

Custom and authority are no sure evidence of truth.

Isaac Watts

Quote Topics

Authority Custom Evidence Sure Truth

Quote Author

Isaac Watts
English - Politician
July 17, 1674 - November 25, 1748

Free thought means fearless thought. It is not deterred by legal penalties, nor by spiritual consequences. Dissent from the Bible does not alarm the true investigator, who takes truth for authority not authority for truth. The thinker who is really free, is independent; he is under no dread; he yields to no menace; he is not dismayed by law, nor custom, nor pulpits, nor society-whose opinion appals so many. He who has the manly passion of free thought, has no fear of anything, save the fear of error.

George Holyoake

Real spiritual authority has to do with the truth of the actual words being spoken, and the spirit of the person behind the words. Really, authority is about truth: honest-living truth.

John Ortberg

There are four chief obstacles in grasping truth ... namely, submission to faulty and unworthy authority, influence of custom, popular prejudice, and the concealment of our own ignorance accompanied by an ostentatious display of our knowledge.

Roger Bacon

The modern susceptibility to conformity and obedience to authority indicates that the truth endorsed by authority is likely to be accepted as such by a majority of people, who are innately obedient to authority. This obedience-truth will then become a consensus-truth accepted by many individuals unable to stand alone against the majority. In this way, the truth promulgated by the propaganda system - however irrational - stands a good chance of becoming the consensus, and may come to seem self-evident common sense.

David Edward

They must find it difficult ... those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority.

Gerald Massey

... my convictions led me to adhere to the sufficiency of the light within us, resting on truth as authority, rather than 'taking authority for truth.'

Lucretia Mott

Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Harry Frankfurt

They must find it hard to take Truth for authority who have so long mistaken Authority for Truth.

Gerald Massey

Custom calls me to 't: What custom wills, in all things should we do't, The dust on antique time would lie unswept, And mountainous error be too highly heap't For truth to o'erpeer.

Brand Blanshard

You are your own highest authority. Do not place your source of authority outside of you. Go within to see if the truth you've found is in harmony with the truth you find in your heart.

Neale Donald Walsch

In the end theologians are jealous of science, for they are aware that it has greater authority than do their own ways of finding "truth": dogma, authority, and revelation. Science does find truth, faith does not.

Jerry A. Coyne

The custom of the Church has very great authority and ought to be jealously observed in all things.

Thomas Aquinas

There are three means of believing--by inspiration, by reason, and by custom. Christianity, which is the only rational institution, does yet admit none for its sons who do not believe by inspiration. Nor does it injure reason or custom, or debar them of their proper force; on the contrary, it directs us to open our minds by the proofs of the former, and to confirm our minds by the authority of the latter.

Blaise Pascal

Culture has never the translucidity of custom; it abhors all simplification. In its essence it is opposed to custom, for custom is always the deterioration of culture.

Frantz Fanon

Criticism does demand a certain kind of authority, but what about the authority of not really being sure what you think? What about the authority, the authenticity that comes from bringing all your intellectual, emotional and spiritual equipment to a piece of art or entertainment whilst still being uncertain and confused?