Richard Whately (1787–1863) was an English academic, rhetorician, logician, philosopher, social reformer, and theologian who also served as Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin. He was a leading Broad Churchman and one of the first critics to acknowledge Jane Austen’s literary talents.
Born in London, Whately was the son of a clergyman. He was educated at Oriel College-Oxford and took holy orders. While at Oxford, he wrote his satiric Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte (1819,) in which he criticized the rigid application of logic to the Bible by establishing that the same techniques used to cast doubt on the miracles would also leave the reality of Napoleon open to question.
In 1825, Whately became principal of St. Alban Hall-Oxford and served as a professor of political economy 1829–31. His treatise Elements of Logic (1826) became a definitive textbook for several generations, and his Elements of Rhetoric (1828) went into many editions. He contributed to the Quarterly Review 1820–21.
Becoming archbishop of Dublin in 1931, Whately became active in Irish cultural and political life, founding a professorship of political economy at Dublin (1832) and the Statistical Society (1847,) serving as president (1835–36) of the royal commission on the Irish poor, and involving himself in educational reform at all levels. He published many works on philosophy and religion, supporting Broad Church views, but his reputation rested mainly on his Logic and Rhetoric.
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It is never worth while to suggest doubts in order to show how cleverly we can answer them.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Doubt
I will undertake to explain to any one the final condemnation of the wicked, if he will explain to me the existence of the wicked—if he will explain why God does not cause all those to die in the cradle of whom he foresees that, when they grow up, they will lead a sinful life.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Wickedness
It is generally true that all that is required to make men unmindful of what they owe to God for any blessing, is, that they should receive that blessing often and regularly.
—Richard Whately
Not in books only, nor yet in oral discourse, but often also in words there are boundless stores of moral and historic truth, and no less of passion and imagination laid up, from which lessons of infinite worth may be derived.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Words
A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them a fortune.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Industry, Children, Fortune, Work, Giving, Habits, Habit
Misgive, that you may not mistake.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Doubt
Honesty is the best policy; but he who acts only on that principle is not an honest man.—No one is habitually guided by it in practice.—An honest man is always before it, and a knave is generally behind it.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Honesty
All frauds, like the wall daubed with untempered mortar, with which men think to buttress up an edifice, always tend to the decay of what they are devised to support.
—Richard Whately
A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor’s.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Selfishness, Helping, Service
The word knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things, viz., truth, proof, and conviction.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Knowledge
The larger the income, the harder it is to live within it.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Riches
The dangers of knowledge are not to be compared with the dangers of ignorance. Man is more likely to miss his way in darkness than in twilight; in twilight than in full sun.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Knowledge
Those who delight in the study of human nature, may improve in the knowledge of it, and in the profitable application of it by the perusal of the best selected fictions.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Fiction
Positive views of truth and duty are those that impress the mind and lead to action; negation dwells mostly in cavil and denial.
—Richard Whately
A confident expectation that no argument will be adduced that will change our opinions is very different from a resolution that none ever shall. We may print but not stereotype our opinions.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Opinion
To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself..
—Richard Whately
Topics: Manners
That is, in a great degree, true of all men, which was said of the Athenians, that they were like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Men, Public
It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is uninstructive; without the latter, it is deceptive.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Wisdom
Ten thousand of the greatest faults in our neighbors are of less consequence to us than one of the smallest in ourselves.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Faults
Falsehood, like poison, will generally be rejected when administered alone; but when blended with wholesome ingredients, may be swallowed unperceived.
—Richard Whately
Reason can no more influence the will, and operate as a motive, than the eyes which show a man his road can enable him to move from place to place, or than a ship provided with a compass can sail without a wind.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Reason
Fancy, when once brought into religion, knows not where to stop.—it is like one of those fiends in old stories which any one could raise, but which, when raised, could never be kept within the magic circle.
—Richard Whately
He that is not open to conviction, is not qualified for discussion.
—Richard Whately
Unless people can be kept in the dark, it is best for those who love the truth to give them the full light.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Communication
Every instance of a man’s suffering the penalty of the law, is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter from transgression.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Law
Proverbs are somewhat analogous to those medical formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready made up in the chemists’ shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct prescription.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Proverbs
Vices and frailties correct each other, like acids and alkalies. If each vicious man had but one vice, I do not know how the world could go on.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Vice
Historians give us the extraordinary events, and omit just what we want, the everyday life of each particular time and country.
—Richard Whately
Topics: History
Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Manners
Weak arguments are often thrust b fore my path; but although they are most unsubstantial, it is not easy to destroy them. There is not a more difficult feat known than to cut through a cushion with a sword.
—Richard Whately
Topics: Argument
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