Voltaire

The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.

And ask each passenger to tell his story, and if there is one of them all who has not cursed his existence many times, and said to himself over and over again that he was the most miserable of men, I give you permission to throw me head-first into the sea.

The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe.

Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.

But in this country it is necessary, now and then, to put one admiral to death in order to inspire the others to fight.

The best way to be boring is to include everything.

History contains little beyond a list of people who have accommodate themselves with other people's property.

There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics. ... We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer.

Paradise is where I am

I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley -- in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered -- or simply to sit here and do nothing?' That is a hard question,' said Candide.

When a man is in love, jealous, and just whipped by the Inquisition, he is no longer himself.

I would rather obey a fine lion, much stronger than myself, than two hundred rats of my own species.

It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.

Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies.\' (Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.)

Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.

We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence

Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.

theology is to religion what poisons are to food

Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.

Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you.

But for what purpose was the earth formed?\' asked Candide. \'To drive us mad,\' replied Martin.

It is proved...that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose.

Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.

Dare to think for yourself.

Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.

Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.

It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part.

God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.

Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.

But nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of the human body, the diseases which assail it, the remedies which will benefit it, exercises his art with caution, and pays equal attention to the rich and the poor.