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We should be similarly wary of accepting common opinions we should judge them by the ways of reason not by popular vote.

Michel de Montaigne

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Michel de Montaigne
Age: 59 †
Born: 1533
Born: February 28
Died: 1592
Died: September 13
Autobiographer
Essayist
French Moralist
Jurist
Philosopher
Poet Lawyer
Politician
Translator
Writer
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Miquèu Eiquèm de Montanha
Miqueu Eiquem de Montanha
Reason
Judge
Way
Judging
Vote
Accepting
Ways
Wary
Opinion
Similarly
Common
Opinions
Political
Popular

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He that had never seen a river imagined the first he met to be the sea and the greatest things that have fallen within our knowledge we conclude the extremes that nature makes of the kind.
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We are all of us richer than we think we are.
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Necessity is a violent school-mistress.
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Diogenes was asked what wine he liked best and he answered as I would have done when he said, Somebody else's.
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I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.
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He that is a friend to himself, know he is a friend to all.
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I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.
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The world is but a perennial movement. All things in it are in constant motion-the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt-both with the common motion and with their own.
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Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves by railing at it and yet it is not absolutely railing against anything, to proclaim its defects, because they are in all things to be found, how beautiful or how much to be coveted soever.
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I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
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Some impose upon the world that they believe that which they do not others, more in number, make themselves believe that they believe, not being able to penetrate into what it is to believe.
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Greatness of soul consists not so much in soaring high and in pressing forward, as in knowing how to adapt and limit oneself.
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There is nothing so noble and so right as to play our human life well and fitly, nor anything so difficult to learn as how to livethis life well and according to Nature.
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Men ... are not agreed about any one thing, not even that heaven is over our heads.
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I go out of my way, but rather by license than carelessness.... It is the inattentive reader who loses my subject, not I. Some word about it will always be found off in a corner, which will not fail to be sufficient, though it takes little room.
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Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.
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In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.
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After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to the spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, to the gladiators.
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The oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried.
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Behold the hands, how they promise, conjure, appeal, menace, pray, supplicate, refuse, beckon, interrogate, admire, confess, cringe, instruct, command, mock and what not besides, with a variation and multiplication of variation which makes the tongue envious.
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