Carolina QuotesThose who are guilty of the argumentum ad ignorantiam profess belief in something because its opposite cannot be proved … In the realm where “prejudice” is now most an issue, it normally takes a form like this: you cannot prove—by the method of statistics and quantitative measurement—that men are not equal. Therefore all men are equal. … You cannot prove—again by the methods of science—that one culture is higher than another. Therefore the culture of the Digger Indians is just a good as that of Muncie, Indiana, or thirteenth-century France.
Richard M. Weaver Carolinian
Source
“Life without prejudice,” p. 6.
- work
- Life Without Prejudice (1965)
- year
- 1965
- locator
- p. 6
Cite this record
“Those who are guilty of the argumentum ad ignorantiam profes…” Richard M. Weaver. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-A9A3AAF253. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/a9a3aaf253
More from Richard M. Weaver
It is not that things give meaning to words; it is that meaning makes things “things.” It does not make things in their subsistence; but it does make things in their discreteness for the understanding.
Life without prejudice, were it ever to be tried, would soon reveal itself to be a life without principle. For prejudices, as we have seen earlier, are often built-in principles. They are the extract which the mind has made of experience.
Drill in exact translation is an excellent way of disposing the mind against that looseness and exaggeration with which the sensationalists have corrupted our world. If schools of journalism knew their business, they would graduate no one who could not render the Greek poets.