Religion may be purified. This great work was begun two hundred years ago: but men can only bear light to come in upon them by degrees.
VoltaireFaith consists in believing not what seems true, but what seems false to our understanding.
VoltaireIt 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.
Voltaire