Michel de Montaigne

“ As in the civil warres, wherein we are now for religions sake. those which got the advantage at the conflict of Rochelabeille, making great joy and bone-fires for that accident, and using that fortune as an assured approbation of their faction: when afterward they come to excuse their disaster of Mont-contour and Jarnac, which are scourges and fatherly chastisements: if they have not a people wholy at their mercy, they will easily make him perceive what it is to take two kinds of corne out of one sacke: and from one and the same mouth to blow both hot and cold. ”

“ Things unknowne are the true scope of imposture and subject of Legerdemaine: forasmuch as strangenesse it selfe doth first give credit unto matters, and not being subject to our ordinarie discourses, they deprive us of meanes to withstand them. ”

“ Our beleefe hath other sufficient foundations, and need not be authorized by events. For the people accustomed to these plausible arguments, and agreeing with his taste, when events sort contrarie and disadvantageous to their expectation, they are in hazard to waver in their faith. ”

“ For the Auditors ignorance lends a faire and large cariere and free libertie, to the handling of secret hidden Matters. Whence it followeth that nothing is so firmly beleeved as that which a man knoweth least ”