A Quote by Jonathan Meades
If you believe in the existence of fairies at the bottom of the garden you are deemed fit for the bin. If you believe in parthenogenesis, ascension, transubstantiation and all the rest of it you are deemed fit to govern the country.
Related Quotes
Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
If man is not fit to govern himself, how can he be fit to govern someone else?
A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.
The tantrums of cloth-headed celluloid idols are deemed fit for grown-up conversation, while silence settles over such a truly important matter as food.
There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?
It is easier to find people fit to govern themselves than people fit to govern others.
A man must first govern himself ere he is fit to govern a family; and his family ere he be fit to bear the government of the commonwealth.
I am quite spiritual. I believed in the fairies when I was a child. I still do sort of believe in the fairies. And the leprechauns. But I don't believe in God.
What we are seeing in America is the creaky old age of an eighteenth-century settlement, deemed at the time to be the new flowering of humankind-come-of-age (the 'Enlightenment') and so deemed to be above revision. At this point the urgent need is for prayer and prophecy.
For one word a man is often deemed to be wise, and for one word he is often deemed to be foolish. We should be careful indeed what we say.
..children know such a lot now, they soon don't believe in fairies, and every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.
There are some who ask us to believe that if we want the best of times for ourselves, the fit and the fortunate, then we'll just have to learn to live with the worst of times for millions of other Americans - that we're doomed to be a nation of the lucky and the left-out. I don't believe it. My mother didn't believe it. Your ancestors didn't believe it. And I don't think you should believe it.
So many people look up to pageants, including young girls and young boys. The message that I would hate to send to them is that you're only deemed worthy of a title or worthy of recognition or of success if you fit in a certain number.
None of us whether Men or Women but have so good an Opinion of our own Conduct as to believe we are fit, if not to direct others, at least to govern our selves.
So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?
The list of things about which we strictly have to be agnostic doesn't stop at tooth fairies and celestial teapots. It is infinite. If you want to believe in a particular one of them - teapots, unicorns, or tooth fairies, Thor or Yahweh - the onus is on you to say why you believe in it. The onus is not on the rest of us to say why we do not. We who are atheists are also a-fairyists, a-teapotists, and a-unicornists, but we don't have to bother saying so.
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