Pierre Bayle Quotes
Pierre Bayle was a French Huguenot philosopher and encyclopedist who lived in exile in Rotterdam after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. His Historical and Critical Dictionary, organized as a network of biographies with copious skeptical footnotes, became one of the most widely read and influential books of the late seventeenth century and a principal source for the philosophes of the next generation. The quotes below are attributed to Pierre Bayle, organized by topic.
Browse Pierre Bayle by topic
Pierre Bayle on Freedom
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Attributed to Pierre Bayle:
“Toleration is the only path to peace among men of different convictions.”
Pierre Bayle on Happiness
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“There is not less wit nor invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought. Cardinal du Perron has been heard to say that the happy application of a verse of Virgil has deserved a talent.”
Works , Volume II, p. 779; in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 653-54: About quotation .
Pierre Bayle on Knowledge
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Attributed to Pierre Bayle:
“Doubt about everything that is not self-evident is the beginning of philosophy.”
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“... l'exactitude de citer. C'est un talent plus rare que l'on ne pense.”
Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1697; rev. 1702) art. "Remarques". Epigraph in W. F. H. King (ed.) Classical and Foreign Quotations , 2nd ed. (1889) title page -
“Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1697; rev. 1702) art. "Remarques". Epigraph in W. F. H. King (ed.) Classical and Foreign Quotations , 2nd ed. (1889) title page”
... l'exactitude de citer. C'est un talent plus rare que l'on ne pense. -
“Reason is like a runner who doesn't know that the race is over, or, like Penelope , constantly undoing what it creates.... It is better suited to pulling things down than to building them up, and better at discovering what things are not, than what they are.”
Reply to the Questions of a Provincial ( Réponse aux questions d'un provincial , 1703). Quoted in Elisabeth Labrousse, Bayle , trans. Denys Potts (Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 61
Pierre Bayle on Politics
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“If the Multiplicity of Religions prejudices the State, it proceeds from their not bearing with one another but on the contrary endeavouring each to crush and destroy the other by methods of Persecution. In a word, all the Mischief arises not from Toleration, but from the want of it.”
Quoted in: Joseph LoConte, "The Golden Rule of Toleration" , Christianity Today (Accessed 6 March 2011)
Pierre Bayle on Truth
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Attributed to Pierre Bayle:
“We are too partial to ourselves to be the judges of our own causes.”
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Attributed to Pierre Bayle:
“The most general infirmity of mankind is its credulity.”
Pierre Bayle on Virtue
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Attributed to Pierre Bayle:
“A society of atheists could practice morality as well as a society of religious men.”