Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
VoltaireRead
One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.
Interpretation
Words can be used to conceal true intentions or feelings.
Voltaire's quote highlights the idea that language serves not only as a means of communication but also as a tool for disguise. People often choose their words carefully, either to obscure their true thoughts, manipulate perceptions, or present a facade that doesn't reflect their authentic self, suggesting an inherent complexity in human interactions.
In practice
In a speech about honesty, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of transparency.
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.
Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance - nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city - as one loses oneself in a forest - that calls for a quite different schooling. Then, signboard and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest.
Sleep is perverse as human nature, Sleep is perverse as a legislature, Sleep is as forward as hives or goiters, And where it is least desired, it loiters.
Man is to man either a god or a wolf.
The nonconformist here may be "beat down" by life but still has a beauty in his or her longing for freedom and for an awakening of the mind.
The only thing worse than a bad review from the Ayatollah Khomeini would be a good review from the Ayatollah Khomeini.
History is the most dangerous product evolved from the chemistry of the intellect. ...History will justify anything. It teaches precisely nothing, for it contains everything and furnishes examples of everything.
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