Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
VoltaireRead
When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?
Interpretation
This quote critiques the indifference of those in power towards the concerns of the common people.
Voltaire's quote reflects on the lack of concern that leaders or those in power often have for the well-being of individuals under their authority. By likening the situation to a highness sending a ship to Egypt without caring about the comfort of the mice on board, he illustrates how those in high positions may be oblivious or apathetic to the struggles of those less fortunate.
In practice
This quote could be used to emphasize the importance of empathy in leadership during a political debate.
Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead.
It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.
It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.
We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature.
It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.
I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.
What's happening now is what happened before, and often what's going to happen again sometime or other
Parody by itself is not subversive, and there must be a way to understand what makes certain kinds of parodic repetitions effectively disruptive, truly troubling, and which repetitions become domesticated and recirculated as instruments of cultural hegemony
Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, but can recapture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty in it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its penalties.
It doesn't matter if that felony happened three weeks ago or thirty-five years ago - for the rest of your life, you've got to check that box, knowing full well the odds are sky-high your application is going straight to the trash.
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