Voltaire Quotes on Mind
Voltaire turned a sharp and sceptical eye on the human mind, and the quotes gathered here display his characteristic wit at its expense. He doubted the reliability of ordinary reasoning, observing famously, in a line marked here as attributed, that common sense is not so common, and that prejudices are what fools use for reason. Voltaire was unsparing about the mind's capacity for self-deception, charging that men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts. He extended the same irony to the would-be reformer, judging that men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all. Drawn from his Philosophical Dictionary, letters, and notebooks, these passages present the mind as prone to prejudice and self-justification, a diagnosis offered, in true Voltairean fashion, with more amusement than despair.
Quotes
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Attributed to Voltaire:
“Common sense is not so common.”
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Attributed to Voltaire:
“Prejudices are what fools use for reason.”
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“It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.”
1750s | Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750) Note: This quotation and the three that follow directly below are from the so-called Leningrad Notebook, also known as Le Sottisier; it is one of several posthumously publish -
“Life is long enough for him who knows how to use it. Working and thinking extend its limits.”
A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness(1902) | p. 219 -
“Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.”
1760s | Letter to Louise Dorothea of Meiningen , duchess of Saxe-Gotha Madame (30 January 1762) -
“Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.”
1760s | Dialogue 14 , Le Chapon et la Poularde (1766); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations , 10th ed. (1919)