Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
VoltaireRead
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the idea that virginity has intrinsic value or moral worth.
Voltaire challenges the societal perception that virginity is a virtue, arguing that such beliefs are merely superstitions of the human mind. He suggests that assessing a person's worth based on their sexual history is both misguided and irrational, emphasizing the need to reconsider the moral frameworks we establish around human behavior.
In practice
This quote can be used in discussions about societal norms surrounding sexuality.
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.
Truth, which is simple and one, admits of no variety.
Philosophers' Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.
Sheβs the kind of person who either dies tragically at twenty-seven, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, or else grows up to win, like, the first-ever Nobel Prize for Awesome.
It is time that Christians were judged more by their likeness to Christ than their notions of Christ. Were this sentiment generally admitted we should not see such tenacious adherence to what men deem the opinions and doctrines of Christ while at the same time in every day practise is exhibited anything but a likeness to Christ.
As compacts, charters of government are superior in obligation to all others, because they give effect to all others. As truths, none can be more sacred, because they are bound, on the conscience by the religious sanctions of an oath. As metes and bounds of government, they transcend all other land-marks, because every public usurpation is an encroachment on the private right, not of one, but of all.
Utopias now appear much more realizable than one used to think. We are now faced with a different new worry: How to prevent their realization.
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