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Of faith and morals, one cannot speak honestly for long without hurting feelings. Therefore, most people speak dishonestly of the most important subjects. Many recent philosophers prefer not to speak of them at all. But in some situations honesty is incompatible with silence.

— Walter Kaufmann The Faith of a Heretic (1961)

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More quotes by Walter Kaufmann

The most obvious failure of organized religions is surely that almost all of them have made a mockery of what their founders taught.

The Faith of a Heretic (1961)

Faith means intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.

The Faith of a Heretic (1961)

Renouncing false beliefs will not usher in the millennium.

The Faith of a Heretic (1959)

Faith means not wanting to know what is true.

paraphrasing Nietzsche, The Faith of a Heretic (1961)

The notion that only what is new and young is beautiful poisons our relationship to the past and to our own future.

Time is an Artist (1978)

All Walter Kaufmann quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Walter Kaufmann (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.