BERKELEY, George Quotes
(1685-1753), Irish bishop and philosopher,
He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, is himself a knave.
He that would make real progress in knowledge, must dedicate his age as well as youth, the latter growth as well as the first fruits, at the altar of truth.
What stubbing, plowing, digging, and harrowing is to land, that thinking, reflecting, examining is to the mind. Each has its proper culture; and as the land that is suffered to lie waste and wild for a long time will be overspread with brushwood, brambles, and thorns, which have neither use nor beauty, so there will not fail to sprout up in a neglected, uncultivated mind, a great number of prejudices and absurd opinions, which owe their origin partly to the soil itself, the passions, and imperfections of the mind of man, and partly to those seeds which chance to be scattered in it by every wind of doctrine which the cunning of statesmen, the singularity of pedants, and the superstition of fools shall raise.
Make a point never so clear, and it is great odds that a man whose habits, and the bent of whose mind lie a contrary way shall be unable to comprehend it;—so weak a thing is reason in competition with inclination.
Westward the course of empire takes its way.
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