Erasmus Quotes

• Erasmus dramatizes a well-established political position: that of the fool who claims license to criticize all and sundry without reprisal, since his madness defines him as not fully a person and therefore not a political being with political desires and ambitions. The Praise of Folly, therefore sketches the possibility of a position for the critic of the scene of political rivalry, a position not simply impartial between the rivals but also, by self-definition, off the stage of rivalry altogether.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Ambition, Self, Political

  "Erasmus's Praise of Folly: Rivalry and Madness". Neophilologus Journal, 1992.

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• Erasmus was the light of his century; others were its strength: he lighted the way; others knew how to walk on it while he himselfremained in the shadow as the source of light always does. But he who points the way into a new era is no less worthy of veneration than he who is the first to enter it; those who work invisibly have also accomplished a feat.

  Stefan Zweig

  Leadership, Light, History

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• Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible. I dislike the stuff. I do not believe in it, for its own sake, at all... My lawgivers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul. My temple stands not upon Mount Moriah but in the Elysian Field where even the immoral are admitted. My motto is 'Lord, I disbelieve - help thou my unbelief.

  E. M. Forster

  Atheist, Believe, Mind

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• I understood that you would take the Human Race in the concrete, have exploded the absurd notion of Pope's Essay on Man, [Erasmus] Darwin, and all the countless Believers-even (strange to say) among Xtians-of Man's having progressed from an Ouran Outang state-so contrary to all History, to all Religion, nay, to all Possibility-to have affirmed a Fall in some sense.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Fall, Science, Men

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, J. R. De J. Jackson (2000). “Lectures 1818-1819 on the history of philosophy”, Bollingen Foundation

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• My law-givers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul.

  E. M. Forster

  Law, Moses, Giver

  E.M. Forster (1951). “Two Cheers for Democracy”

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• from you, my dear Erasmus, let me obtain this request, that just as I bear with your ignorance in these matters, so you in turn will bear with my lack of eloquence.

  Martin Luther

  Ignorance, Matter, Bears

  Martin Luther (2012). “Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings”, p.299, Fortress Press

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• Peace consists, very largely, in the fact of desiring it with all one's soul. The inhabitants of my small country, Costa Rica, have realized those words by Erasmus. Mine is an unarmed people, whose children have never seen a fighter or a tank or a warship.

  Oscar Arias

  Country, Peace, Children

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• When the adversaries of Erasmus had got the Trinity into his edition, they threw by their manuscript as an old almanac out of date.

  Isaac Newton

  Atheism, Trinity, Manuscripts

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• A nation may be in a tumult to-day for a thought which the timid Erasmus placidly penned in his study more than two centuries ago.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Two, May, Study

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1871). “Literature and Life”, p.11

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