We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy, to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt.

Burke, Edmund. "Reflections on the Revolution in France." The Portable Edmund Burke, edited by Isaac Kramnick. Penguin, 2009.

Paine, Thomas. "Common Sense." Rights of Man, Common Sense, and Other Political Writings, edited by Mark Philp. Oxford University Press, 2009, sect. 3.

Homer. The Odyssey, edited by Bernard Knox, translated by Robert Fagles. Penguin Classics, 2006, bk. 3, l. 48.

Pascal, Blaise. "Pensées." Pensées and Other Writings, edited by Anthony Levi, translated by Honor Levi. Oxford University Press, 2008, no. 277.