Quotes About Voltaire

During this earlier period of his activity Voltaire seems to have been trying - half unconsciously, perhaps - to discover and to express the fundamental quality of his genius.

Voltaire, as full of life as summer is full of blossoms, giving his ideas upon all subjects at the expense of prince and king, was exiled to England.

Concerning the boast of Voltaire on the extinction of Christianity and the Bible in 100 years, Geisler and Nix point out that only fifty years after his death the Geneva Bible Society used his press and house to produce stacks of Bibles. 32/ 123,124 WHAT AN IRONY OF HISTORY!

Voltaire was deeply impressed by it and cited it often.

What was it Voltaire said? "To the living we owe respect, but to the dead only truth." I honor Hugo's memory by telling the truth about him.

Commerce, Voltaire declared, was the base on which the greatness of our nation was built; now it's all that keeps us from going bankrupt.

The malevolence of men revealed itself to his mind in all of its ugliness

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

Pleasantry is never good on serious points, because it always regards subjects in that point of view in which it is not the purpose to consider them.

The new religion without any secrets is philosophy. The old religion, said Aristotle, is necessary only for the uneducated; Confucius, Buddha, Voltaire and Lessing were of the same opinion.

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.

Imagine all contradictions, all possible incompatibilities--you will find them in the government, in the law-courts, in the churches, in the public shows of this droll nation.

There are many problems with this argument. We'll start with the most obvious. The idea that our current ideals of freedom, equality and democracy are somehow products of the 'Western tradition' would in fact have come as an enormous surprise to someone like Voltaire

Inspiration: A peculiar effect of divine flatulence emitted by the Holy Spirit which hisses into the ears of a few chosen of God.

Whenever an important event, a revolution, or a calamity turns to the profit of the church, such is always signalised as the Finger of God.

If we do not exert the right of eating our neighbor, it is because we have other means of making good cheer

All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables that have been agreed upon

All our ancient history, as one of our wits remarked, is no more than accepted fiction.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Hast thou found out, Voltaire, that it is bliss to die, And does thy hideous smile over thy bleached bones fly?

The take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism - as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion. Voltaire got it right long ago: 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' So did Bertrand Russell: 'Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.

This may sound somewhat obvious but, as the French philosopher Voltaire once famously pointed out, the main problem with common sense is that it is not so common.

I found out and lost the only place I ever sort of regarded as home. Oh well. Best to stay in one's garden but Voltaire was a boring writer and sex is one of the greatest things there is.

Thus the cerebral footings were laid. Voltaire preferred intellectual liberty and enlightened despotism. Montesquieu wanted limited monarchy and a separation of political powers. Rousseau dreamed of an ideal republican commonwealth.