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It is better to risk sparing a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.
- Man is free at the instant he wants to be.
- Brutus, act II, scene I (1730)
- Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.
- Dialogue xiv. Le Chapon et la Poularde (l763).
- Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but so far Christians have been the most intolerant of all people.
- Philosophical Dictionary, "Toleration," Section II
- What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.
- Philosophical Dictionary, "Soul," Section XI
- What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbors, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
- Letter XII: on M. Pope and some other famous poets
- Love truth, but pardon error.
- Second discourse: on liberty; Seven Discourses in Verse on Man (1738)
- Use, do not abuse; the wise man arranges things so. I flee Epictetus and Petronius alike. Neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
- Seven Discourses in Verse on Man (1738)
- The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.
- Seven Discourses in Verse on Man (1738)
- Who serves his country well has no need of ancestors.
- Mérope, act I, scene III (1743)
- It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
- Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750)
- To pray to God is to flatter oneself that with words one can alter nature.
- Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750)
- We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.
- Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750)
- If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.
- Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750)
- It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.
- The Century of Louis XIV (1752)
- A minister of state is excusable for the harm he does when the helm of government has forced his hand in a storm; but in the calm he is guilty of all the good he does not do.
- The Century of Louis XIV (1752)
- This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
- Essay on General History and on the Customs and Spirit of Nations, Chapter 70 (1756)
- Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.
- Letter to Élie Bertrand (1759-01-05)
- When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
- Letter to Mme. d'Épinal, Ferney (1760-12-26)
- There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
- Letter to François-Joachim de Pierre, cardinal de Bernis (1761-04-23)
- Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy, the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.
- "Whether it is useful to maintain the people in superstition," Treatise on Toleration (1763)
- Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is unjust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust. If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world.
- Question on Miracles (1765)
The fourth sentence is often quoted separately as: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
- Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one.
- Letter to Frederick II of Prussia (1767-04-06)
- Where is the prince sufficiently educated to know that for seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm?
- Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great
- I always made one prayer to God, a very short one. Here it is: "O Lord, make our enemies quite ridiculous!" God granted it.
- Letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville (1767-05-16)
- Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
- It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
- Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767)
- Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden.
- Letter to Pierre-Joseph François Luneau de Boisjermain (1769-10-21)
- It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.
- Letter to François-Louis-Henri Leriche (1770-02-06)
- If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
- Épître à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs (1770-11-10)
- "If God did not exist, he would have to be invented." But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.
- Voltaire quoting himself in his Letter to Prince Frederick William of Prussia (1770-11-28)
- The best is the enemy of the good.
- I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.
- Letter to Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1776-02-08)
- I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.
- Déclaration de Voltaire, note to his secretary, Jean-Louis Wagnière (1778-02-28)
- Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.
- Philosophical Dictionary, "Civil and Ecclesiastical Laws"
- Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.
- Philosophical Dictionary, "Liberty of the Press"
- All philosophical sects have run aground on the reef of moral and physical ill. It only remains for us to confess that God, having acted for the best, had not been able to do better.
- Philosophical Dictionary, "Power, Omnipotence"
- The public is a ferocious beast: one must chain it up or flee from it.
- Letter to Mademoiselle Quinault
- I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.
- As quoted in More Random Walks in Science: An Anthology (1982) by Robert L. Weber, p. 65
- Morality is everywhere the same for all men, therefore it comes from God; sects differ, therefore they are the work of men.
- The man, who in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week.
- His reputation will go on increasing because scarcely anyone reads him.
- All men would then be necessarily equal, if they were without needs. It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.
- Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.
- Prejudice is an opinion without judgment.
- What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly – that is the first law of nature.
- Money is always to be found when men are to be sent to the frontiers to be destroyed: when the object is to preserve them, it is no longer so.
- Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active force. Under coercion there is no virtue, and without virtue there is no religion. Make a slave of me, and I shall be no better for it. Even the sovereign has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, which by its nature supposes choice and liberty. My thought is no more subject to authority than is sickness or health.
- "Canon Law: Ecclesiastical Ministry" (1771)
- It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.
- "Man: General Reflection on Man" (1771)
- In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
- The Eternal has his designs from all eternity. If prayer is in accord with his immutable wishes, it is quite useless to ask of him what he has resolved to do. If one prays to him to do the contrary of what he has resolved, it is praying that he be weak, frivolous, inconstant; it is believing that he is thus, it is to mock him. Either you ask him a just thing, in which case he must do it, the thing being done without your praying to him for it, and so to entreat him is then to distrust him; or the thing is unjust, and then you insult him. You are worthy or unworthy of the grace you implore: if worthy, he knows it better than you; if unworthy, you commit another crime by requesting what is undeserved.
In a word, we only pray to God because we have made him in our image. We treat him like a pasha, like a sultan whom one may provoke or appease.
- It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
- A witty saying proves nothing.
- Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767)
- Attributed, source uncertain:
- All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.
- Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
- Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.
- God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.
- God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
- He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.
- He must be very ignorant, for he answers every question he is asked.
- He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead.
- How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child's board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.
- I hate women because they always know where things are.
- Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.
- The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
- Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
- Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.
- To believe in God is impossible; not to believe in Him is absurd.
- To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
- To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.
- Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.
- When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.
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