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.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Michael Faraday
"I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds."
"The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success are concentration, discrimination, organization, innovation and communication."
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."
"The more we know of the laws of nature, the more we are led to believe in the wisdom, intelligence, and design of God."
"I have been working for some time on the subject of electricity and magnetism, and I think I have made some discoveries."
Verification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: deepseek
1 source checked
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.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].