Voltaire

Where some states possess an army, the Prussian Army possesses a state.

All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.

I am a little deaf, a little blind, a little important and on top of this are two or three abominable infirmities, but nothing destroys my hope.

Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.

Now, you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you wish therefore necessarily. The word \'liberty\' does not therefore belong in any way to your will....The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics have called will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, is a chimera unworthy of being combated.

Everything happens through immutable laws, ...everything is necessary... There are, some persons say, some events which are necessary and others which are not. It would be very comic that one part of the world was arranged, and the other were not; that one part of what happens had to happen and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason badly; others not to reason at

It is fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions

The Deluge: A punishment inflicted on the human race by an all-knowing God, who, through not having foreseen the wickedness of men, repented of having made them, and drowned them once for all to make them better - an act which, as we all know, was accompanied by the greatest success.

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

Love is a cloth which imagination embroiders.

The tyranny of the many would be when one body takes over the rights of others, and then exercises its power to change the laws in its favor.

Man is not born wicked; he becomes so, as he becomes sick.

The question of good and evil remains in irremediable chaos for those who seek to fathom it in reality. It is mere mental sport to the disputants, who are captives that play with their chains.

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

The man who says to me, \'Believe as I do, or God will damn you,\' will presently say, \'Believe as I do, or I shall assassinate you.\'

Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities.

If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.

Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent people.

Know that the secret of the arts is to correct nature.

Philosopher: A lover of wisdom, which is to say, Truth.

Truth is a fruit that can only be picked when it is very ripe.

It is not the answers you give, but the questions you ask.

Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.

Our priests are not what a silly populace supposes; all their learning consists in our credulity.

Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.

Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.