Quote by Michel de Montaigne: “Every man carries the whole form of the human condition within him.”

You don't need to study all of humanity to understand people — just look honestly at yourself. Every feeling, flaw, and contradiction you find inside is something every other person carries too. Self-knowledge is the doorway to understanding everyone.

Montaigne wrote the Essais during a period of brutal religious civil war in France between Catholics and Huguenots. His project of honest self-examination was partly a retreat from political chaos and partly a radical argument that the inner life of an ordinary person was worth examining.

French Renaissance philosopher and writer credited with popularising the essay as a literary form. His three-volume Essais, first published in 1580, explored personal experience as a lens for universal human questions with remarkable candour and wit.