Either/Or Part I, Swenson Translation p. 19 Variations include: People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought, which they avoid. People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
1840s, Either/Or (1843)
“Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.”
Ils ne se servent de la pensée que pour autoriser leurs injustices, et n'emploient les paroles que pour déguiser leurs pensées.
Dialogue xiv, Le Chapon et la Poularde (l763); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Citas
Original
Ils ne se servent de la pensée que pour autoriser leurs injustices, et n'emploient les paroles que pour déguiser leurs pensées.
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Voltaire 167
French writer, historian, and philosopher 1694–1778Related quotes
The monster to Robert Walton
Frankenstein (1818)
Context: You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my crimes and his misfortunes. But in the detail which he gave you of them he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I endured wasting in impotent passions. For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires. They were forever ardent and craving; still I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me?
“Where Nature’s end of language is declin’d,
And men talk only to conceal the mind.”
Satire II, l. 207.
Love of Fame (1725-1728)
Source: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
“The true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them.”
No. 3 (Oct. 20, 1759).
The Bee (1759)
“Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts.”
Source: The Cave (2000), p. 124