Erasmus

«¿Habrá cosa más necia que el que un candidato servil halague al pueblo y compre su favor con propinas, soborne la adhesión de la masa, se deleite con sus aclamaciones, sea llevado en triunfo como una bandera venerable y se haga levantar una estatua de bronce en el foro? Agregad los nombres y sobrenombres que adoptan, los honores divinos otorgados a esos hombrecillos; agregad que tiranos criminales por demás sean comparados a los dioses en el curso de ceremonias públicas. Todas estas cosas no pueden ser más estultas y para reírse de ellas no bastaría con un solo Demócrito»

Bir hükümdar öyle bir konumdadır ki, doğruluktan azıcık bel verse bu büyük bir veba gibi yayılarak bütün halkı sarar.

To know nothing is the only happiness,

Doğa sahte renklerden nefret eder.

for self-love is no more than the soothing of a man's self, which, done to another, is flattery.

For Xenophon in his Oeconomicus rightly considers, that there is something beyond human nature, something wholly divine, in absolute rule over free and willing subjects.

Creer que la felicidad del hombre consiste en las mismas cosas es ser loco en extremo. Sólo la opinión que de ellas tenemos nos hace feliz.

Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders.

There are infinite of these subtle trifles, and others more subtle than these, of notions, relations, instants, formalities, quiddities, haecceities, which no one can perceive without a Lynceus whose eyes could look through a stone wall and discover those things through the thickest darkness that never were.

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.

Peu de gens comprennent l'immense avantage qu'il y a à ne jamais hésiter et à tout oser.

The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is.

A remarkable thing happens in the experience of my fools: from them not only true things, but even sharp reproaches, will be listened to; so that a statement which, if it came from a wise man's mouth, might be a capital offense, coming from a fool gives rise to incredible delight. Veracity, you know, has a certain authentic power of giving pleasure, if nothing offensive goes with it; but this the gods have granted only to fools.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king

For if by chance some woman wishes to be thought of as wise, she does nothing but show herself twice a fool.