Science Quote by William John Wills

Self-certainty is the hidden fuel in every belief system, and Wills names it with the cool bluntness of a working mind. "We all think we are right" isn’t a celebration of confidence; it’s a diagnosis of the psychology that makes conviction possible. The second clause tightens the screws: "or we should not believe as we do". Belief, for Wills, isn’t primarily an ornament of identity or tradition. It’s a wager we only place because we feel, at least locally and privately, that the odds are on our side.

Coming from a 19th-century scientist, the line carries an implicit warning about the limits of rational self-portraiture. Victorian science was busy professionalizing doubt: turning skepticism into method, insisting that "what feels true" is the wrong standard. Wills’s sentence admits that, method or no method, the human engine still runs on the perception of correctness. Even the scientist who prides himself on openness to revision has to believe his current model is the best available account of reality, or he wouldn’t act on it, publish it, defend it.

The subtext is sharper than it looks: disagreements aren’t just clashes of information but clashes of felt legitimacy. Everyone arrives thinking they hold the reasonable position; the "other side" becomes, by default, irrational, corrupted, or naive. Read that way, Wills isn’t excusing stubbornness. He’s pointing to the cognitive precondition that makes persuasion hard, humility rare, and scientific discipline necessary: we can’t stop feeling right, so we build systems that force our "rightness" to earn its keep.