Quote#Wisdom
A rational reaction against the irrational excesses and vagaries of…
Quote byWilliam Ewart Gladstone · 1809–1898
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Homeric Synchronism : An Enquiry Into the Time and Place of Homer (1876), Introduction.
English (original)
A rational reaction against the irrational excesses and vagaries of scepticism may, I admit, readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity. To be engaged in opposing wrong affords, under the conditions of our mental constitution, but a slender guarantee for being right.
— William Ewart Gladstone
More from William Ewart Gladstone
I believe the slave trade to be by far the foulest crime that taints the history of mankind in any Christian or pagan country.
From the ancient strife of territorial acquisition we are labouring, I trust and believe, to substitute another, a peaceful and a fraternal strife among nations, the honest and the noble race of industry and art.
I have clung to the notion of a conscience, and a Catholic conscience, in the State, until that idea has become in the general mind so feeble, as to be absolutely inappreciable in the movement of public affairs. I do not know whether there …
Ireland, Ireland! That cloud in the west! That coming storm! That minister of God's retribution upon cruel, inveterate, and but half-atoned injustice! Ireland forces upon us those great social and great religious questions—God grant that …
This is the negation of God erected into a system of Government.
There is a policy going a begging; the general policy that Sir Robert Peel in 1841 took office to support—the policy of peace abroad, of economy, of financial equilibrium, of steady resistance to abuses, and promotion of practical …