Pierre Bayle Quotes on Knowledge
Pierre Bayle was a French Huguenot philosopher and encyclopedist who lived in exile in Rotterdam after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This page collects quotes attributed to Pierre Bayle on the topic of knowledge, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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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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Attributed to Pierre Bayle:
“The most general infirmity of mankind is its credulity.”
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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 -
“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”
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. -
“Works , Volume II, p. 779; in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 653-54: About quotation .”
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. -
“Quoted in: Joseph LoConte, "The Golden Rule of Toleration" , Christianity Today (Accessed 6 March 2011)”
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.