There is one thing in the world more wicked than the desire to command, and that is the will to obey.

- William Kingdon Clifford

No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.

- William Kingdon Clifford

Namely, we have no right to believe a thing true because everybody says so unless there are good grounds for believing that some one person at least …

- William Kingdon Clifford

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 t…

- William Kingdon Clifford

Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog h…

- William Kingdon Clifford

All our liberties are due to men who, when their conscience has compelled them, have broken the laws of the land.

- William Kingdon Clifford

If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in…

- William Kingdon Clifford

There is no scientific discoverer, no poet, no painter, no musician, who will not tell you that he found ready made his discovery or poem or picture …

- William Kingdon Clifford

An atom must be at least as complex as a grand piano.

- William Kingdon Clifford