Men trust their ears less than their eyes.
Interpretation
People tend to believe what they see rather than what they hear.
This quote by Herodotus suggests that visual evidence is more convincing to individuals than auditory information. It highlights the human tendency to rely on sight as a more trustworthy source of information, which can lead to skepticism towards spoken words or claims that lack visual support.
In practice
During a discussion about misinformation, this quote can emphasize the importance of credible visual data.
The Scythians take kannabis seed, creep in under the felts, and throw it on the red-hot stones. It smolders and sends up such billows of steam-smoke that no Greek vapor bath can surpass it. The Scythians howl with joy in these vapor-baths, which serve them instead of bathing, for they never wash their bodies with water.
The man who has planned badly, if fortune is on his side, may have had a stroke of luck; but his plan was a bad one nonetheless.
Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.
The worst pain a man can have is to know much and be impotent to act.
All men's gains are the fruit of venturing.
Illness strikes men when they are exposed to change.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Everything is true,' he said. 'Everything anybody has ever thought.' 'Will you be all right?' 'I'll be all right,' he said, and thought, And I'm going to die. Both those are true, too.
The guest will judge better of a feast than the cook
I think that if people are instructed about anything, it should be about the nature of cruelty. And about why people behave so cruelly to each other. And what kind of satisfactions they derive from it. And why there is always a cost, and a price to be paid.
If a philosophy is to bring happiness it should be inspired by kindly feelings. Marx pretended that he wanted the happiness of the proletariat; what he really wanted was the unhappiness of the bourgeois.
[When asked "Dr. Einstein, why is it that when the mind of man has stretched so far as to discover the structure of the atom we have been unable to devise the political means to keep the atom from destroying us?"] That is simple, my friend. It is because politics is more difficult than physics.
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