Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
VoltaireRead
Will is wish, and liberty is power.
Interpretation
True desire is rooted in freedom and the capability to act on one's wishes.
Voltaire's quote suggests that willpower, or the capacity to desire and wish for something, is intricately linked to the notion of liberty, or freedom. Without the freedom to act upon our will, our wishes remain unfulfilled, thus underscoring the importance of personal autonomy and the power that comes with it in achieving one's desires.
In practice
A motivational speaker could reference this quote to inspire personal empowerment.
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.
Objects exist and if one pays more attention to them than to people, it is precisely because they exist more than the people. Dead objects are still alive. Living people are often already dead.
A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!
Work is valued by the social value of the worker.
A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.
The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.
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