84 Quotes About Conventional-wisdom

But I have forgotten to tell you how I came into the world, and am telling you my father's story instead of my own. You seem to like hearing about it though, and you can't understand one without the other.

often finds a more interesting story behind the conventional one. Martin Luther's supposedly revolutionary resistance to indulgences took place in a German state where they were sold. Even more intriguing, they weren't sold because the ruling authorities there get a brisk business in holy relics – which Luther left alone.

No one ever made more trouble than gentle Jesus meek and mild.

A bureaucrat who said no to everything rarely got in trouble.

He kept himself in line with popular opinion, which meant popular prejudice.

The author concedes that humanity had the fatal tendency to shape truth to our beliefs rather than beliefs to the Truth.

New ideas can be supremely bad ideas, and by the time people realize how bad they are, it is sometimes difficult to get rid of them.

When I say "most people" I mean, of course, me after my first cocktail.

He was a trifle embarrassed to be deserting his hard-won realism in order to follow what he thought was the dominant philosophical fashion.