Susan Stebbing Quotes on Truth

Susan Stebbing, the first woman to hold a philosophy professorship in Britain, treated clear thinking as a public duty and a discipline in the service of truth, and the quotes gathered here present that. Stebbing was unsparing about the obstacles to truth in ordinary thinking: we must face the unfortunate fact, she wrote, that we are moved to the acceptance of beliefs by factors wholly irrelevant to their truth, and that we accept without testing any belief that fits our prejudices. Against this she set the deliberate discipline of logic, distinguishing carefully in order to think clearly, and insisted that bad arguments are not corrected by good intentions. She also held that philosophy ought to be intelligible to those who are not philosophers. Drawn from A Modern Introduction to Logic and Thinking to Some Purpose, these passages present clear, honest reasoning as the citizen's safeguard of truth.