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.
VoltaireDivorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.
VoltaireMen fed upon carnage, and drinking strong drinks, have all an impoisoned and acrid blood which drives them mad in a hundred different ways.
VoltaireIf you are attacked as regards your style, never reply; it is for your work alone to make answer.
VoltaireShakespeare is a drunken savage with some imagination whose plays please only in London and Canada.
VoltaireTheological religion is the source of all imaginable follies and disturbances. It is the parent of fanaticism and civil discord; it is the enemy of mankind.
VoltaireIt is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
VoltaireWhat 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.
VoltaireTrue greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten oneself and others.
VoltaireDo you think... that men have always massacred each other, as they do today? Have they always been liars, cheats, traitors, brigands, weak, flighty, cowardly, envious, gluttonous, drunken, grasping, and vicious, bloody, backbiting, debauched, fanatical, hypocritical, and silly?
VoltaireWhat can you say to a man who tells you he prefers obeying God rather than men, and that as a result he's certain he'll go to heaven if he cuts your throat?
VoltairePleasure has its time; so too, has wisdom. Make love in thy youth, and in old age attend to thy salvation.
VoltaireIf you wish to obtain a great name or to found an establishment, be completely mad; but be sure that your madness corresponds with the turn and temper of your age.
VoltaireIf there are atheists, who is to be blamed if not the mercenary tyrants of souls who, in revolting us against their swindles, compel some feeble spirits to deny the God whom these monsters dishonour?
VoltaireHistory is but the record of crimes and misfortunes. L'histoire n'est que le tableau des crimes et des malheurs
VoltaireEverything 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 all others to persecute those who reason.
VoltaireThe only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.
VoltaireI acknowledge that four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what our soul is.
VoltaireMany are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason.
Voltaire