Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. A awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live.
Interpretation
Our beliefs shape the world, and we have both the privilege and responsibility to influence future generations.
The quote by William Kingdon Clifford emphasizes the profound impact that our beliefs and actions have on the world and future generations. He suggests that communication and the exchange of ideas shape our collective reality, making it imperative for individuals to be mindful of their influence. This duality of privilege and responsibility indicates that while we have the power to effect change, we must also recognize the weight of that power and the obligation to create a better world for those who come after us.
In practice
Used in a speech about environmental stewardship to highlight our duty to future generations.
The aim of scientific thought, then, is to apply past experience to new circumstances; the instrument is an observed uniformity in the course of events. By the use of this instrument it gives us information transcending our experience, it enables us to infer things that we have not seen from things that we have seen; and the evidence for the truth of that information depends on our supposing that the uniformity holds good beyond our experience.
Remember that [scientific thought] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.
This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation.
We may always depend on it that algebra, which cannot be translated into good English and sound common sense, is bad algebra.
It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
From inaccessible mountain range by way of desert untrod by human foot to the ends of the unknown seas, the breath of the everlasting creative spirit is felt, rejoicing over every speck of dust that hearkens to it and lives.
The first thing to realize in meditation is that there is no authority, that the mind must be completely free to examine, to observe, to learn. And so there is no following, no accepting, no obedience.
Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.
You can never step in the same river twice.
One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all.
So for a good old-gentlemanly vice, I think I must take up with avarice.
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