Monday, November 19, 2018

Hasty reasoners

Via Anecdotal Evidence, a letter from William Cowper to John Newton on this date in 1781:
Discoverers of truth are generally sober, modest, and humble; and if their discoveries are less valued by mankind than they deserve to be, can bear the disappointment with patience and equality of temper. But hasty reasoners and confident asserters are generally wedded to an hypothesis, and transported with joy at their fancied acquisitions, are impatient under contradiction, and grow wild at the thoughts of a refutation.

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