One of my own personal favorite quotes in our A.A. Big Book is found at the end of APPENDIX II .. SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE .. pages 567 and 568.
I quote :
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance --- that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
-- HERBERT SPENCER
Below is a link to the entire Appendix II
https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/en_bigbook_appendiceii.pdf
I find this to be an absolutely outstanding piece of knowledge. Its truth to be sound and (in my opinion) very accurate.
I will begin with the following Rhetorical Question :
What is the work of an obscure 19th-century British philosopher doing in Alcoholics Anonymous? The Big Book was written by a group of Americans, including Bill Wilson and other early members of AA (many relatively uneducated), and was published in 1938. The Spencer quotation is one of the few references to outside thinkers in the entire book. How did it get there?
The Newport Institute
Rhetorical Answer :
“Contempt before investigation” was penned almost a century earlier by another British philosopher, William Paley, whose book Evidences of Christianity contains the following sentence: “Contempt prior to examination is an intellectual vice, from which the greatest faculties of mind are not free.” Paley was writing about Romans who scoffed at early Christianity.
And despite the (apparent) fact that Herbert Spencer did not write the above words, my opinion remains unchanged after I (following his advice) explored this statement.
IF any of you are interested, please click onto the below links and make your own decision.
Herbert Spencer Quote references.
https://anonpress.org/spencer/
https://www.thefix.com/content/contempt-prior-to-investigation-AA-Herbert-Spencer8042
The below is a link to a fair number of references (including the above two) about Herbert Spencer.
And I will wrap-this-up with a big Thanks to Michael DeG a close personal friend whose ears perked up when (over the phone) I was telling Michael about the above discussion.