The modern mind will accept ...

The modern mind will accept nothing on authority, but will accept anything on no authority. Say that the Bible or the Pope says so and it will be dismissed without further examination. But preface your remark with \
The modern mind will accept nothing on authority, but will accept anything on no authority. Say that the Bible or the Pope says so and it will be dismissed without further examination. But preface your remark with "I think I heard somewhere," or, try but fail to remember the name of some professor who might have said "such-and-such," and it will be immediately accepted as an unshakable fact.

Quotes from the same author

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.
A change of opinions is almost unknown in an elderly military man.
Men reform a thing by removing the reality from it, and then do not know what to do with the unreality that is left.
The power which makes a man able to entertain a good impulse is the same as that which enables him to make a good gun; it is imagination.
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.