...for the truth is always older than all the opinions men have held regarding it; and one should be ignoring the nature of truth if we imagined that the truth began at the time it came to be known.
You see, if the height of the mercury [barometer] column is less on the top of a mountain than at the foot of it (as I have many reasons for believing, although everyone who has so far written about it is of the contrary opinion), it follows that the weight of the air must be the sole cause of the phenomenon, and not that abhorrence of a vacuum, since it is obvious that at the foot of the mountain there is more air to have weight than at the summit, and we cannot possibly say that the air at the foot of the mountain has a greater aversion to empty space than at the top.
We are so presumptuous that we should like to be known all over the world, even by people who will only come when we are no more. Such is our vanity that the good opinion of half a dozen of the people around us gives us pleasure and satisfaction.
Force rules the world-not opinion; but it is opinion that makes use of force.
What is it, in your opinion, to be a great nobleman? It is to be master of several objects that men covet, and thus to be able to satisfy the wants and the desires of many. It is these wants and these desires that attract them towards you, and that make them submit to you: were it not for these, they would not even look at you; but they hope, by these services... to obtain from you some part of the good which they desire, and of which they see that you have the disposal.
Opinion is the queen of the world.
If you want others to have a good opinion of you, say nothing.
That queen, of error, whom we call fancy and opinion, is the more deceitful because she does not always deceive. She would be the infallible rule of truth if she were the infallible rule of falsehood; but being only most frequently in error, she gives no evidence of her real quality, for she marks with the same character both that which is true and that which is false.
Opinion is, as it were, the queen of the world, but force is its tyrant.
The world is ruled by force, not by opinion; but opinion uses force.
Orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees may be heresy on the other.
Who confers reputation? who gives respect and veneration to persons, to books, to great men? Who but Opinion? How utterly insufficient are all the riches of the world without her approbation!
Force and not opinion is the queen of the world; but it is opinion that uses the force. [Fr., La force est la reine du monde, et non pas l'opinion; mais l'opinion est celle qui use de la force.]
The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.
No one is ignorant that there are two avenues by which opinions are received into the soul, which are its two principal powers: the understanding and the will.
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