Now, since our condition accommodates things to itself, and transforms them according to itself, we no longer know things in their... reality; for nothing comes to us that is not altered and falsified by our Senses. When the compass, the square, and the rule are untrue, all the calculations drawn from them, all the buildings erected by their measure, are of necessity also defective and out of plumb. The uncertainty of our senses renders uncertain everything that they produce.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What we are told of the inhabitants of Brazil, that they never die but of old age, is attributed to the tranquility and serenity o...f their climate; I rather attribute it to the tranquility and serenity of their souls, which are free from all passion, thought, or any absorbing and unpleasant labors. Those people spend their lives in an admirable simplicity and ignorance, without letters, without law, without king, without any manner of religion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Is it not better to remain in suspense than to entangle yourself in the many errors that the human fancy has produced? Is it not b...etter to suspend your convictions than to get mixed up in these seditious and quarrelsome divisions?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have no participation in Being, because all human nature is ever midway between being born and dying, giving off only a vague i...mage and shadow of itself, and a weak and uncertain opinion. And if you chance to fix your thoughts on trying to grasp its essence, it would be neither more nor less than if your tried to clutch water.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This idea is more surely understood by interrogation; WHAT DO I KNOW? which I bear as my motto with the emblem of a pair of scales....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What am I to choose? "Choose what you please, as long as you choose." There you have a foolish answer, which seems to be the outco...me, however, of all Dogmatism, which will not allow us to be ignorant of that which we are ignorant.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To judge the appearances we receive of things, we should need a judicatory instrument; to verify this instrument, we should need a... demonstration; to rectify this demonstration, we should need an instrument: so here we are arguing in a circle. Seeing the senses cannot decide our dispute, being themselves full of uncertainty, we must have recourse to Reason; there is no reason but must be built upon another reason, so here we are retreating backwards to all eternity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whoever will imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment without leaning or inclination, on any occasion whatever, has... a conception of Pyrrhonism.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[One cannot express lack of knowledge in affirmative language.] This idea is more firmly grasped in the form of interrogation: "Wh...at do I know?"Mthe words I bear as a motto, inscribed over a pair of scales.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »