QuoteProject
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote illustrates the power of persuasion and belief, highlighting how absurd ideas can lead to harmful actions.

Voltaire's quote emphasizes the danger of blind belief and the influence that persuasive individuals can have over others. If someone can convince you of irrational or absurd ideas, they can also drive you to perform terrible deeds, suggesting that critical thinking and skepticism are essential for moral integrity and consciousness.

Themes

BeliefPersuasionAbsurdityAtrocitiesCritical Thinking

In practice

Example use cases

In a debate about the role of propaganda in society.

More from Voltaire

Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
VoltaireRead
He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead.
VoltaireRead
It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.
VoltaireRead
It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.
VoltaireRead
We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature.
VoltaireRead
It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.
VoltaireRead

Similar quotes

...she needed to confirm its presence. Like the keeper of the lighthouse and the prisoner, she regarded it as a mooring, a checkpoint, some stable visual object that assured her that the world was still there; that this was like and not a dream. That she was alive somewhere, inside, which she acknowledged to be true only because a thing she knew intimately was out there, outside of herself.
Toni MorrisonRead
There are powers that can counterfeit almost everything in the Christian life.
Martyn Lloyd-JonesRead
Much evil must befall a country before it wholly forgets the Elves, if once they dwelt there.
J. R. R. TolkienRead
I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.
George SantayanaRead
There are no endings, and never will be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was an ending.
Brandon SandersonRead
I was awfully curious to find out why I didn't go insane.
Abraham MaslowRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Voltaire | QuoteProject