Michael Faraday — "It is right that we should stand by and act on our principles; but not right to …"
It is right that we should stand by and act on our principles; but not right to hold them in obstinate blindness.
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More from Michael Faraday
"I have in fact been a very lucky fellow; I have often said that I should be a very miserable creature if I could not feel that I was doing something for the good of other people."
"I have often regretted that I was not able to pursue a more regular course of study."
"Lectures which really teach will never be popular; lectures which are popular will never really teach."
"A man who is certain he is right is almost sure to be wrong."
"Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature; and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of consistency."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Stick to your principles and let them guide your actions, but don't cling to them so rigidly that you refuse to see new evidence or reconsider when you're wrong. Conviction is valuable, but stubbornness that ignores reality becomes a kind of willful blindness. The line between integrity and dogmatism is your willingness to keep looking honestly at the world, even when it might challenge what you already believe.
Relevance to Michael Faraday
Faraday was a devout Sandemanian Christian whose faith gave him firm moral principles, yet his scientific work demanded constant openness to revision. He discovered electromagnetic induction by testing assumptions rather than defending them, and famously refused a knighthood and the Royal Society presidency on principle. His career embodied this balance: holding convictions deeply while letting experimental evidence, not pride, decide what he believed about the physical world.
The era
Faraday worked in 19th-century Britain amid fierce debates between religious orthodoxy, emerging science, and political reform. The Victorian era prized moral certainty, yet Darwin, geology, and new physics were unsettling fixed worldviews. Scientific societies often defended established theories against outsiders, and Faraday, a blacksmith's son without formal education, had seen how gentlemen-scientists clung to wrong ideas for status. This remark captures the tension between Victorian conviction culture and the intellectual humility that real discovery required.
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