Desiderius Erasmus Quotes

Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.

The main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth

Read first the best books. The important thing for you is not how much you know, but the quality of what you know.

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.

Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn't -it's human.

The chief element of happiness is this: to want to be what you are.

He who allows oppression shares the crime.

Our determination to imitiate Christ should be such that we have no time for other matters.

When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.

Picture the prince, such as most of them are today: a man ignorant of the law, well-nigh an enemy to his people's advantage, while intent on his personal convenience, a dedicated voluptuary, a hater of learning, freedom and truth, without a thought for the interests of his country, and measuring everything in terms of his own profit and desires.

By a Carpenter mankind was made, and only by that Carpenter can mankind be remade.

There is no joy in possession without sharing.

A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.

In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Now what else is the whole life of mortals, but a sort of comedy in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each ones part until the manager walks them off the stage?

War is sweet to those who haven't tasted it. Dulce bellum inexpertis.

Great abundance of riches cannot be gathered and kept by any man without sin.

I put up with this church, in the hope that one day it will become better, just as it is constrained to put up with me in the hope that I will become better.

Almost all Christians being wretchedly enslaved to blindness and ignorance, which the priests are so far from preventing or removing, that they blacken the darkness, and promote the delusion: wisely foreseeing that the people (like cows, which never give down their milk so well as when they are gently stroked), would part with less if they knew more.

Fortune favors the audacious.

The majority of the common people loathe war and pray for peace; only a handful of individuals, whose evil joys depend on general misery, desire war.

It is a greater advantage to be honestly educated than honorably born.

What passes out of one's mouth passes into a hundred ears. It is a great misfortune not to have sense enough to speak well.

At last concluded that no creature was more miserable than man, for that all other creatures are content with those bounds that nature set them, only man endeavors to exceed them.

Before you sleep, read something that is exquisite, and worth remembering.