French language
Published May 11, 1993
The Dictionary of Received Ideas (or Dictionary of Accepted Ideas; in French, Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues) is a short satirical work collected and published in 1911–13 from notes compiled by Gustave Flaubert during the 1870s, lampooning the clichés endemic to French society under the Second French Empire. It takes the form of a dictionary of automatic thoughts and platitudes, self-contradictory and insipid. It is often paired with the Sottisier (a collection of stupid quotations taken from the books of famous writers).