Michel de Montaigne Quotes on Knowledge
Montaigne's Essays (first edition 1580, expanded through 1592) inaugurated the modern essay form and gave Renaissance skepticism its most influential expression. The motto Que sais-je? — what do I know? — frames the long Apology for Raymond Sebond, in which Montaigne arrays the considerations of the Pyrrhonian and Academic Skeptics against any confident philosophical or theological claim, and concludes that the proper attitude is one of suspended judgment combined with conformity to the customs of one's own community. The framework shaped Descartes (whose method of doubt is in part a response to Montaigne) and the broader skeptical tradition through Bayle and Hume.
Quotes
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“What do I know?”
Ch. 16. Of Glory (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877) -
“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.”
... il n'est rien creu si fermement que ce qu'on sçait le moins, ... -
“Je veux qu'on me voit en ma façon simple, naturelle, et ordinaire, sans étude et artifice; car c'est moi que je peins...Je suis moi-même la matière de mon livre.”
I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray...I am myself the matter of my book. | To the Reader (tr. Donald M. Frame, 1957) -
“To the Reader (tr. Donald M. Frame, 1957)”
Je veux qu'on me voit en ma façon simple, naturelle, et ordinaire, sans étude et artifice; car c'est moi que je peins...Je suis moi-même la matière de mon livre. -
“Certes, c'est un subject merveilleusement vain, divers, et ondoyant, que l'homme. Il est malaisé d'y fonder jugement constant et uniforme.”
Truly man is a marvellously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgement on him. | Ch. 1. That Men by various Ways arrive at the same End (tr. Donald M. Frame) Man in sooth is a marvellous, vain, fickle, and unstable subject. (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842) -
“Truly man is a marvellously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgement on him.”
Certes, c'est un subject merveilleusement vain, divers, et ondoyant, que l'homme. Il est malaisé d'y fonder jugement constant et uniforme. -
“Ch. 1. That Men by various Ways arrive at the same End (tr. Donald M. Frame) Man in sooth is a marvellous, vain, fickle, and unstable subject. (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842)”
Certes, c'est un subject merveilleusement vain, divers, et ondoyant, que l'homme. Il est malaisé d'y fonder jugement constant et uniforme. -
“All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate.”
Ch. 2. Of Sorrow (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842) -
“Ch. 2. Of Sorrow (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842)”
All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate. -
“Ch. 9. Of Liars (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877)”
A strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment. -
“We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, which is the cause that what we believe we do not believe, and cannot disengage ourselves from what we condemn.”
Book I | Ch. 16. Of Glory (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877) -
“Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness .”
Book I | Ch. 25 -
“Since I would rather make of him an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.”
Book I | Ch. 26. On the Education of Children -
“We are no nearer heaven on the top of Mount Cenis than at the bottom of the sea; take the distance with your astrolabe. They debase God even to the carnal knowledge of women, to so many times, and so many generations.”
Book II | Ch. 12 -
“We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.”
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) | Book III, Ch. 8. Of the Art of Conversation -
“I moreover affirm that our wisdom itself, and wisest consultations, for the most part commit themselves to the conduct of chance.”
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) | Book III, Ch. 8. Of the Art of Conversation