Semi-automatic Pens
Voltaire (below, photo taken on the day he received tenure)
on
tolerance (from Dictionnaire
philosophique):
“We are all formed of
frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each
other’s folly – that is the
first law of nature.”*
Given the human condition, pardoning each other’s folly (or follies) that is "the first law of nature,"
not adherence to the truth damn-all. As if we had the truth, not some
ridiculous, half-assed version of it! That is 
the human condition:
we don’t have the, only the half-assed. (In a previous entry, on “Testicles,”
Voltaire has allowed: “I affirm nothing: God keep me from doing so. I only doubt.”)
the human condition:
we don’t have the, only the half-assed. (In a previous entry, on “Testicles,”
Voltaire has allowed: “I affirm nothing: God keep me from doing so. I only doubt.”)
Here (on “Tolerance”) Voltaire goes on: “It is clear that the individual
who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a
monster.” That goes without saying, but it doesn’t prevent its happening. For there are such monsters, “men whom
centuries of bigotry have made powerful” and who “have other powerful men
beneath them, and these have still others,” and they “hire fanatics to cry at
the top of their voices, ‘Respect my master’s absurdities, tremble . . . and
keep your mouth shut.’”
Zipping my lip!
___________________
*for the French, click on Voltaire
for the English for the Arabic, click here
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