Life & Wisdom Quote by Richard Whately

Whately is doing something sly here: he’s not warning you that people can be fooled, but that they can fool themselves on demand. The opening clause treats belief like a muscle you can train toward whatever feels congenial. That’s a cold, almost clinical view of human reasoning - less a searchlight than a servant. Once you grant that premise, the “all the difference” isn’t rhetorical flourish; it’s a diagnosis. The order of operations decides whether “truth” is a standard you submit to or a decoration you hang on conclusions you already want.

The subtext is aimed at the respectable forms of self-deception: the tidy argument, the pious certainty, the confident pamphlet. Whately, an Anglican thinker writing in an age of religious controversy and rising public debate, is pushing back against a culture that prized persuasive rhetoric and factional loyalty. If belief is pliable, then beginning with “What is truth?” is an ethical choice, not merely an intellectual one. Starting there forces methods, evidence, and humility onto the table before identity and appetite take over.

Ending with the question is what we now call motivated reasoning with better manners: you build the case, rally the feelings, win the room, then tack on “truth” as a final stamp of legitimacy. Whately’s line lands because it exposes a timeless trick: we don’t just have biases; we arrange our thinking so the biases get the last word.