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.
Dreaming of a tomorrow, which tomorrow, will be as distant then as 'tis today.
The privileged have regularly invited their own destruction with their greed.
I never understood why when you died, you didn't just vanish, everything could just keep going on the way it was only you just wouldn't be there. I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say 'figment.'
Whatever its symbol - cross or crescent or whatever - that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race.
A beggar's book outworths a noble's blood.
"My insides don't match up with my outsides." "Do anyone's inside and outsides match up?" "I don't know. I'm only me." "Maybe that's what a person's personality is: the difference between the inside and the outside."
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