Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
VoltaireRead
The multitude of books is making us ignorant.
Interpretation
The overwhelming number of books can lead to confusion and ignorance rather than enlightenment.
In this quote, Voltaire suggests that while books are meant to educate and inform, an excess of literature can have the opposite effect, resulting in ignorance. This points to the idea that quality and critical thinking are more important than quantity when it comes to knowledge acquisition.
In practice
This quote could be used during a lecture about the importance of critical reading in academia.
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.
Children feel the whiteness of the lily with a graphic and passionate clearness which we cannot give them at all. The only thing we can give them is information-the information that if you break the lily in two it won't grow again.
Reading is at the center of our lives. The library is our brain. Without the library, you have no civilization.
In everything, there are two kinds of development-analytical and synthetical. In the former the Hindus excel other nations. In the latter they are nil.
If we want children to learn to tend the land and nourish themselves and have conversations at the table, we need to communicate with them in ways that are positive.
You have no choice as a professional chef: you have to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat until it becomes part of yourself. I certainly don't cook the same way I did 40 years ago, but the technique remains. And that's what the student needs to learn: the technique.
I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools (in America) that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn't there. If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don't ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.
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