Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
VoltaireRead
All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that emotional insights from women hold greater value than rational thoughts from men.
Voltaire's quote highlights a perspective on the importance of sentiment and emotion, particularly valuing the intuitive understandings often associated with women over the logical arguments commonly attributed to men. This can be interpreted as a commentary on the differing approaches to understanding and relating to the world, emphasizing that emotional wisdom can be more profound than intellectual reasoning.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about gender differences in communication styles.
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.
Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.
The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may only resort to force only against those who start the use of force.
The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.
...Americans...automatically equate dissension with disloyalty. They view any criticism of our existing social, economic, and political forms, as sedition and subversion. ...(" The growing reluctance of Americans to criticize, and their increasing tendency to condemn those who, in ever dwindling numbers, will still voice dissent") is disturbing, deplorable, and truly dangerous.
Someday no one will remember that she ever existed, I wrote in my notebook, and then, or that I did. Because memories fall apart, too. And then you're left with nothing, left not even with a ghost but with its shadow. In the beginning, she had haunted me, haunted my dreams, but even now, just weeks later, she was slipping away, falling apart in my memory and everyone else's, dying again.
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