Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
VoltaireRead
Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes personal responsibility for inaction and the moral weight of missed opportunities to do good.
Voltaire's quote suggests that individuals bear a moral obligation for not only the actions they take but also for the good deeds they fail to perform. It highlights a philosophical viewpoint on accountability, conveying that inaction in the face of opportunity is itself a form of guilt, underscoring the importance of actively participating in the betterment of society and oneself.
In practice
During a speech about community involvement, you could use this quote to inspire action among attendees.
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.
Pleasure without God, without the sacred boundaries, will actually leave you emptier than before. And this is biblical truth, this is experiential truth. The loneliest people in the world are amongst the wealthiest and most famous who found no boundaries within which to live. That is a fact I've seen again and again.
The idea that women are innately gentle is a fantasy, and a historically recent one. Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction, is depicted as wreathed in male human skulls; the cruel entertainments of the Romans drew audiences as female as they were male; Boudicca led her British troops bloodily into battle.
We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.
To some extent, we've always had an admiration for extroversion in our culture. But the extrovert ideal really came to play at the turn of the 20th century when we had the rise of big business.
How can I know anything about the past or the future, when the light of the Beloved shines only Now.
The sinner is not the one who uses a lot of grace... The saint burns grace like a 747 burns fuel on take off.
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