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Vice of special knowledge
“… for a man may have some special knowledge and experience of the nature of a river or a fountain, who in other matters knows only what everybody knows. However, to circulate this little scrap of knowledge, he will undertake to write the whole of physics. From this vice spring many great abuses.” I.31 “Of…
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Each man calls barbarism whatever
“I think there is nothing barbarous and savage in that nation . . . except that each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice; for indeed it seems we have no other test of truth and reason than the example and pattern of the opinions and customs of the country we live in.”…
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Present knowledge
“We are, I believe, learned only with present knowledge, not with past, any more than with future.” I.25 “Of pedantry” (p.121)
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Education is not regurgitation
“Let him be asked for an account not merely of the words of his lesson, but of its sense and substance, and let him judge the profit he has made by the testimony not of his memory, but of his life. Let him be made to show what he has just learned in a hundred…
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Change us for the better
“Now it is not enough for our education not to spoil us; it must change us for the better.” I.25 “Of pedantry” (p. 124)
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To philosophize is to prepare for death
“Cicero says that to philosophize is nothing else but to prepare for death. This is because study and contemplation draw our soul out of us to some extent and keep it busy outside the body; which is a sort of apprenticeship and semblance of death.” I.20 “That to philosophize is to learn to die” (p.…
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Learning and indigestion
“It is a sign of rawness and indigestion to disgorge food just as we swallowed it. The stomach has not done its work if it has not changed the condition and form of what has been given to cook.” I.26 “Of the education of children (p. 134) [Montaigne is specifically speaking about learning and the…
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Art Should Not Gain the Pre-Eminence of Mother Nature
“Neither is it reasonable that art should gain the pre-eminence of our great and powerful mother nature. We have so surcharged her with the additional ornaments and graces we have added to the beauty and riches of her own works by our inventions, that we have almost smothered her; yet in other places, where she…
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Condemning things of slight probability
“How many things of slight probability there are, testified to by trustworthy people, which, if we cannot be convinced of them, we should at least leave in suspense! For to condemn them as impossible is to pretend, with rash presumption, to know the limits of possibility.” I.27 “It is folly to measure the true and…
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Embracing each other by our names
“We embraced each other by our names.” I. 28 “Of friendship” (p. 169)