Pierre Bayle quotes

Pierre Bayle was a French philosopher and writer, renowned for his work in the fields of skepticism and religious toleration. His most famous work, the "Historical and Critical Dictionary," profoundly influenced Enlightenment thought throughout Europe. He challenged dogmatic beliefs and promoted the importance of critical reasoning. Here are 10 of his quotes:

It is thus tolerance that is the source of peace, and intolerance that is the source of disorder and squabbling. (Pierre Bayle)

The antiquity and general acceptance of an opinion is not assurance of its truth.

Pierre Bayle

It is pure illusion to think that an opinion that passes down from century to century, from generation to generation, may not be entirely false.

Pierre Bayle

Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.

Pierre Bayle

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.

Pierre Bayle

I know too much to be a sceptic and too little to be a dogmatist.

Pierre Bayle

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.

Pierre Bayle

I am a good Protestant, and in the full sense of the term, for from the bottom of my soul, I protest against everything that is said, and everything that is done.

Pierre Bayle

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.

Pierre Bayle

There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought.

Pierre Bayle

Pierre Bayle

Pierre Bayle - Image

Occupation: French Philosopher
Born: November 18, 1647
Died: December 28, 1706
Quotes count: 10
Wikipedia: Pierre Bayle

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