"Uncritical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... speak, except to say that they must by their nature be tentative and experimental. The radical mind is to-day one of the most dangerous elements in society, just because all the world over men are very ready to be influenced and are eager for change and are uncritical. Cleveland in an essay entitled Can Democracy be Efficient? exhibits a type of thinking about political questions that ought to appeal to all practical thinkers. It is his method rather than, in this connection, his conclusions ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... after, however, when the Romans became undisputed masters of Gaul, we find Rouen the capital of the province, called the Secunda Lugdunensis; and from that tine forward, it continued to increase in importance. Etymologists have been amused and puzzled by "Rothomagus," its classical name. In an uncritical age, it was contended that the name afforded good proof of the city having been founded by Magus, son of Samothes, contemporary of Nimrod. Others, with equal diligence, sought the root of Rothomagus in the name of Roth, who is said to have been its tutelary god; and ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... account of its uncritical methods Augustinianism has found but few defenders and deserves notice only in so far as it claims to base its teaching ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... all boarders, but of outsiders who came in to learn geography and hear the Colonel explain the Bible; and not only that, but to be told of stirring deeds beyond the sea by one who had himself contributed to the making of history. We can well believe that before this uncritical but appreciative audience, from whose favour he had nothing to hope, or, as he would say, to fear, Gordon threw off the restraint and shyness habitual to him. It was very typical of the man that, where ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... made of the supposed smaller brain of the Negro race; but this is as yet an unproved assumption, based on the uncritical measurement of less than a thousand Negro brains as compared with eleven thousand or more European brains. Even if future measurement prove the average Negro brain lighter, the vast majority of Negro brain weights fall within the same limits as the whites; and ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... to an uncritical and unchronological audience, or Dame Agnes might have received a gentle intimation that she was antedating the reign of King Arthur by the short period of two ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... the modern world. Then and there he planned a conspiracy to rob the greatest character in literary history of his just fame; and, under the pseudonym of "Delia Bacon," advanced those theories of his own concealed authorship which have ever since deluded the uncritical and disgusted all lovers of common-sense ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... insufficient appreciation of its meaning for mankind. It is true that there are thousands of workers scattered throughout the world contributing their mites to the general store. They increase yearly, almost daily, and their achievements, in spite of an uncritical enthusiasm in some quarters and a semi-charlatanism in others, have been and continue magnificent. But they are pecking at a mountain which requires organized, massive, engineering organization for ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... in Europe, was something more impalpable than the will-force of a domineering woman. They were born into the misty morning twilight of the medieval renaissance, of an age when intellectual curiosity was awakening, when philosophy, the sciences and Latin literature were studied with a lively but uncritical enthusiasm, when the rhetorician and the sophist were the uncrowned kings of intelligent society. The philosophy was little more than school-logic, derived at second or third hand from Aristotle, the science a grotesque amalgam of empiricism and tradition. The Latin classics, apart from their ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... over us is so much a matter of association that every traveler to other countries finds the feathered songsters of less merit than those he left behind. The stranger does not hear the birds in the same receptive, uncritical frame of mind as does the native; they are not in the same way the voices of the place and the season. What music can there be in that long, piercing, far-heard note of the first meadowlark in spring ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... Catholic sovereigns is J. H. Mariejol, L'Espagne sous Ferdinand et Isabelle: le Gouvernement, les Institutions, et les Moeurs (1892). William H. Prescott, The Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic (various editions), is less uncritical in character, and consequently more trustworthy, than the other works of this author. An important study of the personal character of Isabella is Clemencin, Elogio de la Reina Catolica, in Real Academia de la Historia, Memorias, IV. An important and suggestive study of ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... to one of the most prominent of his characteristics as a historian. Uncritical and often inconsistent as he is, his mistakes are not due to partisanship, for he is extraordinarily cosmopolitan. The Germans he dislikes as unchivalrous; but though his life lay in the period of the Hundred Years' War between England and France, and though he describes many of the events of that ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... spiritual realities expressed in institutions and he had his inherited instincts of reverence for the rituals that embodied the spiritual life of his race. He was impatient with dissent and with facile scepticisms. He did not expect a woman to have reasoned beliefs, nor did he ask a credulous, uncritical orthodoxy; but he did want the Christian colouring of mind, the Christian outlook; he did want his wife to be a woman who would teach her children to say their prayers at her knees. It was with something like dismay that he gathered from Karen that her conception of life ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... experiment "as the highest means of proof," which gives evidence for these "certain facts"? The whole discussion in general about prehistoric man, which Virchow has mixed up with his Munich address (pp. 30, 31), is the clearest evidence of the uncritical spirit in which he deals with these historical problems as "exact natural sciences." He assures us that "not one single ape's skull, nor skull of an anthropoid ape, has ever been found which could actually have belonged to a human owner!" and he adds this sentence, ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... when the parents were thirty might rank as the tenth child, and would be so reckoned by the biometricians. One does not need to be a biologist to perceive that conclusions based upon assumptions so uncritical are worth nothing at all, and it is tempting to suggest that the biometricians are so called, on a principle long famous, because they ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... fallen, and now the site of the tree is only marked by the row of young cypresses which have been planted in a circle round the base of the Oak of Mamre. But who shall prophesy that, a century hence, a tree will not have acquired sufficient size and antiquity to be foisted upon uncritical pilgrims as the veritable tree ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... must emphasize just as decidedly how harmful it was that this "ferment" was introduced into lay circles at an unseasonable time by the apostles of materialism. For while it was very well adapted to bring about in educated circles a fermentation which produced beneficial results, in uncritical lay-circles this ferment produced nothing but ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... honorable men they are faithful to their bread; and by authentic tradition the common man, in whose disciplined preconceptions the kept classes are his indispensable betters, is also imbued with the uncritical faith that the invested wealth which enables these betters tracelessly to consume a due share of the yearly product is an addition to the ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... patched up a piece without any central tragical idea, and hid their want of thought with much effective theatrical invention, pageants, a trial, a coronation, a christening, etc., and with bright, facile, vinous dialogue, of the kind that will hold an uncritical audience. The play, when done, was mounted with extreme splendour at the Globe Theatre. Wadding from the cannons discharged in the first act set fire to the theatre, and burned it to the ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... he watched her steadily, with unchanging, lit-up eyes. She was a strange creature to him. But she had no power over him. She flushed, and was irritated. Yet she glanced again and again at his dark, living face, curiously, as if she despised him. She despised his uncritical, unironical nature, it had nothing for her. Yet it angered her as if she were jealous. He watched her with deferential interest as he would watch a stoat playing. But he himself was not implicated. He was different in kind. She was all lambent, biting flames, he was a red fire glowing steadily. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... and began in the usual ranting way; but she soon forgot St. Clair in poor Juliet, and did it as she had often longed to do it, with all the power and passion she possessed. Very faulty was her rendering, but the earnestness she put into it made it most effective to her uncritical audience, who "brought down the house," when she fell upon the grass with her best stage drop, and lay there getting her breath after the mouthful of vinegar she had taken in ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... In the uncritical and boisterous atmosphere of the Satyr-play it was natural hospitality, not especially laudable or surprising. From the analogy of similar stories I suspect that Admetus originally did not know his guest, and received not so much the reward of exceptional ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... influenced perhaps by his comparative weal, Dennis decided that he would purchase a ticket to the Olympus, and climbing the rear approach to that elevation, found himself seated shortly with the gallery gods, viewing with uncritical contrasts the relative merits of the clown, the harlequin and ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... and other methods than those to which they have been accustomed are required. At any rate, they and the large public which hangs upon their words show a growing inclination to be respectful to the philosopher and an anxiety (sometimes an uncritical anxiety) to hear what he has ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... be mistaken, is that which marks them all as belonging to a romantic school, in almost all the modern senses of that term. That is to say, they are not the spontaneous product of an uncritical and ingenuous imagination; they are not the same sort of thing as the popular stories on which many of them are founded; they are the literary work of authors more or less sophisticated, on the look-out for new sensations and ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... ninth Provincial Letter) that 'after having written my letter I read the works of Fathers Barry and Binet.' If such a man as Pascal could be so grossly unfair as to write a criticism on works which he had not read, what can be expected from the non-judicial and uncritical public which takes all ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... good as both are, fall short of their predecessors. Ten years earlier The Fortunes of Nigel would have been a miracle, and one might have said, 'If a man begins like this, what will he do later?' Now, thankless and often uncritical as is the chatter about 'writing out,' we can hardly compare Nigel with Guy Mannering, or Rob Roy, or even The Abbot, and not be conscious of something that (to use a favourite quotation of Scott's own), 'doth appropinque an ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... Tertullian in Rome or Africa, Irenaeus in Gaul. They all flourished about A.D. 190. They all speak of the Gospels, not only as well known and received, but as being the only Gospels acknowledged and received by the Church. One of them uses very "uncritical" arguments to prove that the Gospels could only be four in number; but the very absurdity of his analogies is a witness to the universal tradition of his day. To what date before their time must this tradition reach, so ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... his spirit, it is impossible not to perceive a strain of naivete in Mr. Gladstone. He adhered to some of his principles that of the value of representative institutions, for instance with a faith which was singularly literal; his views upon religion were uncritical to crudeness; he had no sense of humour. Compared with Disraeli's, his attitude towards life strikes one as that of an ingenuous child. His very egoism was simple-minded; through all the labyrinth of his passions there ran a single thread. But the centre of the labyrinth? Ah! the thread might lead ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... however, in that sense that I here use it. The history of astronomy presents the records of some rather perplexing observations, not confirmed by later researches, but yet not easily to be explained away or accounted for. Such observations Humboldt described as belonging to the myths of an uncritical period; and it is in that sense that I employ the term 'astronomical myth' in this essay. I propose briefly to describe and comment on some of the more interesting of these observations, which, in ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Bauer's mistake to consist in the fact that it is only the Christian State, and not the "general State," that he subjects to criticism, that he does not investigate the relation of political emancipation to human emancipation, and consequently lays down conditions which are only explicable from an uncritical confusion of political emancipation ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... that the familiarity of this hypothesis must not delude us into uncritical acceptance of it, but that if any other hypothesis is physically possible it may reasonably be entertained, it was argued that by tracing out the process of condensation in a nebulous spheroid, we are led to infer the eventual formation of a molten ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... was brought to an end by a maid sent to find Rosalind. After she had gone Maurice saw a book on the grass where she had been lying, and reaching through the hedge with his crutch, he drew it toward him. When he removed the outside cover, even his uncritical eye saw it was a handsome hook. "Shakespeare's 'As You Like It.' Edited by Louis A. Sargent," he read. "Why, it is one of Shakespeare's plays," he said, in surprise. So this was the ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... to critical twenty-one. She worked off her superfluous spirits at the outdoor games which may be indulged in California for eight months of the year, rode horseback every day, used all her brothers' slang she could remember when in the society of such uncritical friends as her young Aunt Alexina, and bided her time. Sooner or later she was determined to "get out and hustle,"—"shake a leg." That would be the only complete change from her present life, not matrimony and running with fast sets. She wanted more money, she wanted to live alone, ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... for a person, if where there prevails this mode of distinguishing children, it has probably often been given to those born early in the morning; the traditions concerning one of such who became noted, would, in the mind of the uncritical savage ... lead to identification with the dawn."[10] In another passage: "The primitive god is the superior man ... propitiated during his life and still more after his death."[11] Summing up, Spencer thus concludes: "Instead of seeing ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... when we analyze their origin and true character, we find that many of them have absolutely no support in the Scriptures, and in many cases are directly contradictory to the plain biblical teachings. Too often they are but the fanciful conjectures of the rabbis. Developed in an uncritical age, and based upon the unreliable methods of interpretation current among the Jews in the early Christian centuries, they are often sadly misleading. A close analogy is found in the traditional identifications of most of the Palestinian sacred sites. To-day the Oriental guide shows the ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... absurdity; and will have less respect for the Trinity than they would wish to have. The quotation is, "The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; and yet they (?) are not three Gods, but one God." I am accused of following an "uncritical principle," in not reasoning in the same way. If it is "uncritical," I plead guilty, and beg that my sentence may be as mild as possible. But before the sentence is pronounced may it not be well to apply ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... exacting from his prospective son-in-law a promise that in twelve months' time he would return. During that interval correspondence went on apace not only between the affianced lovers, but between M. Forestier and Ingres, the former taking affectionate and not uncritical interest in the other's projects. For Ingres was before all things a projector, anticipating by decades the achievements of his later years. The glow of enthusiasm, the fever of creativeness were at its height. Italy ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Marjorie played "house" together in the Raymonds' backyard. The blue silk stockings and heelless, blue kid slippers emphasized the babyish effect of her costume, and Marjorie had hard work to keep back her tears. But Mary could not read that sudden rush of emotion in the calm, uncritical face which Marjorie turned ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... and has undertaken with great success to uproot among the Socialists of this country the fanciful pictures and fallacies concerning Australasia that date in this country from the time of the radical and fearless but uncritical and optimistic books of Henry D. Lloyd ("A Country Without Strikes," etc.). Mr. Russell shows that a Labor Party as in Australia may gain control of the forms of government, without actually gaining the sovereignty over society or industry. (See the International Socialist Review, September, ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... he could have brought forward any parallel to all this in the literature of the time, or could even have shown a reasonable probability that such a fiction might have been produced in an age which (as we are constantly reminded) was singularly inappreciative and uncritical in such matters, and which certainly has not left any evidence of a genius for realism, for its highest conception of romance-writing does not rise above the stiffness of the Clementines or the extravagance ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot |
