Other related topics at:
Virtue and Vice
216. Burke, Edmund; Convictions;
Sophistry
Of a person [Burke] who differed from him in politicks, he said,
"In private life he is a very honest gentleman; but I will not
allow him to be so in publick life. People may be honest,
though they are doing wrong; that is between their Maker and
them. But we, who are suffering by their pernicious
conduct, are to destroy them. We are sure that [Burke] acts from
interest. We know what his genuine principles were. They who
allow their passions to confound the distinctions between right
and wrong, are criminal. They may be convinced; but they have
not come honestly by their conviction."
Boswell: Life
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742. Convictions; Religious
Conversion
"That conversion will always be suspected that apparently concurs
with interest. He that never finds his error till it hinders his
progress towards wealth or honour, will not be thought to love
truth only for herself. Yet it may easily happen that
information may come at a commodious time; and as truth and
interest are not by any fatal necessity at variance, that one may
by accident introduce the other. When opinions are struggling
into popularity, the arguments by which they are opposed or
defended become more known; and he that changes his profession
would perhaps have changed it before, with the like opportunities
of instruction. This was the then state of Popery [soon after
the ascension of King James]; every artifice was used to
show it in its fairest form; and it must be owned to be a
religion of external appearance sufficiently attractive."
Johnson: Dryden (Lives of the Poets)
Link
1,025. Conversion; Politics
"He that changes his party by his humour is not more virtuous
than he that changes it by his interest; he loves himself rather
than truth."
Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)
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