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Voltaire Quotes


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If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.
[God]

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
[Glory]

If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal, nor the philosophical writings of Cicero.
[Censorship]

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.
[Art]

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

In this country it is a good thing to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

Indolence is sweet, and its consequences bitter.

Injustice in the end produces independence.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?
[Experience]

It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.

It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

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

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
[War]

It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.
[Patriotism]


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