Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
VoltaireRead
To a toad what is beauty? A female with two lovely pop-eyes, a wide mouth, yellow belly, and green spotted back.
Interpretation
Beauty is subjective and varies significantly across different perspectives and experiences.
In this quote, Voltaire emphasizes the idea that beauty is not universal but instead dependent on individual perception. He uses the example of a toad's perspective, illustrating that what one finds beautiful can vary drastically from another's viewpoint, ultimately reflecting the diversity of standards by which beauty is judged in nature and society.
In practice
In a discussion about beauty standards in different cultures.
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.
Sport in the sense of a mass-spectacle, with death to add to the underlying excitement, comes into existence when a population has been drilled and regimented and depressed to such an extent that it needs at least a vicarious participation in difficult feats of strength or skill or heroism in order to sustain its waning life-sense.
We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.
You must believe that you can help bring about a better world. A good society is produced only by good individuals, just as truly as a majority in a presidential election is produced by the votes of single electors.
As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.
The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom.
Time is a dream ... a destroying dream;_x000D_ _x000D_ It lays great cities in dust, it fills the seas;_x000D_ _x000D_ It covers the face of beauty, and tumbles walls.
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