All Francis Wright Quotes
Speak of change, and the world is in alarm. And yet where do we not see change?
Francis Wright
69% of people like this quote
A necessary consequent of religious belief is the attaching ideas of merit to that belief, and of demerit to its absence.
Francis Wright
61% of people like this quote
The simplest principles become difficult of practice, when habits, formed in error, have been fixed by time, and the simplest truths hard to receive when prejudice has warped the mind.
Francis Wright
61% of people like this quote
Now here is a departure from the first principle of true ethics. Here we find ideas of moral wrong and moral right associated with something else than beneficial action. The consequent is, we lose sight of the real basis of morals, and substitute a false one.
Francis Wright
60% of people like this quote
But while human liberty has engaged the attention of the enlightened, and enlisted the feelings of the generous of all civilized nations, may we not enquire if this liberty has been rightly understood?
Francis Wright
55% of people like this quote
Our religious belief usurps the place of our sensations, our imaginations of our judgment. We no longer look to actions, trace their consequences, and then deduce the rule; we first make the rule, and then, right or wrong, force the action to square with it.
Francis Wright
55% of people like this quote
Instead of establishing facts, we have to overthrow errors; instead of ascertaining what is, we have to chase from our imaginations what is not.
Francis Wright
54% of people like this quote
And when did mere preaching do any good? Put something in the place of these things. Fill the vacuum of the mind.
Francis Wright
53% of people like this quote
Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you.
Francis Wright
52% of people like this quote
The hired preachers of all sects, creeds, and religions, never do, and never can, teach any thing but what is in conformity with the opinions of those who pay them.
Francis Wright
51% of people like this quote
We hear of the wealth of nations, of the powers of production, of the demand and supply of markets, and we forget that these words mean no more, if they mean any thing, then the happiness, and the labor, and the necessities of men.
Francis Wright
50% of people like this quote
He who lives in the single exercise of his mental faculties, however usefully or curiously directed, is equally an imperfect animal with the man who knows only the exercise of muscles.
Francis Wright
50% of people like this quote
We have seen that no religion stands on the basis of things known; none bounds its horizon within the field of human observation; and, therefore, as it can never present us with indisputable facts, so must it ever be at once a source of error and contention.
Francis Wright
48% of people like this quote
The existing principle of selfish interest and competition has been carried to its extreme point; and, in its progress, has isolated the heart of man, blunted the edge of his finest sensibilities, and annihilated all his most generous impulses and sympathies.
Francis Wright
46% of people like this quote
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