Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“Nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know.”
- Date
- 1580
- English wording
- Charles Cotton — Translator · from French
Meaning of “Nothing is so firmly believed, as what we…”
Certainty can be strongest where understanding is weakest, so confidence by itself is poor evidence that a belief has been examined well.
Where does it come from?
Essays of Montaigne, Book I, Chapter XXXI, ‘That a Man Is Soberly to Judge of the Divine Ordinances,’ Charles Cotton translation edited by William Carew Hazlitt (1877); Project Gutenberg Volume 06 #3586 / Complete Essays #3600. The sentence appears in Montaigne’s skeptical warning about confidence concerning unknown things and speculative claims about divine purposes.
