Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

1657–1757 · French writer and philosopher of the enlightenment

Topics: complexity, learning

• Men are not willing to suffer the decision of things to be too easie, and therefore they mingle their own prejudices with truths, and so create greater perplexities than are Naturally found therein; and those scruples, which our selves frame, give us the most pain to untangle.

  — Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

• It is more reasonable to remove error from truth, than to venerate error because it is mix'd with truth.

  — Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle