Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
VoltaireRead
One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.
Interpretation
Words can be used to conceal true intentions or feelings.
Voltaire's quote highlights the idea that language serves not only as a means of communication but also as a tool for disguise. People often choose their words carefully, either to obscure their true thoughts, manipulate perceptions, or present a facade that doesn't reflect their authentic self, suggesting an inherent complexity in human interactions.
In practice
In a speech about honesty, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of transparency.
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.
Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science.
Some of the homes that have been built in the last 10 years just appall me. Why do humans need huge homes? I was born poor and I didnβt know you bought clothes at anything but the Goodwill until I went to college. Some of our mentality about what it means to have a good life is, I think, not going to help us in the next 50 years. We have to think through how to choose a meaningful life where weβre helping one another in ways that really help the Earth.
It is not within the character of a believer to curse, to damn, to speak or act improperly.
The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.
Not only is the past of a person with no memory inaccessible; his ability to think about the future is imperilled. Time travel, then, is ultimately - and paradoxically - an exercise in remembering. And without that capacity it simply cannot exist.
Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
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