Almost all life depends on probabilities.
History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead.
We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.
Historians are gossips who tease the dead
Everything 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.
Let us meet four times a year in a grand temple with music, and thank God for all his gifts. There is one sun. There is one God. Let us have one religion. Then all mankind will be brethren.
History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below.
"You're a bitter man," said Candide. "That's because I've lived," said Martin.
If you are attacked as regards your style, never reply; it is for your work alone to make answer.
What can we say with certainty?
I keep to old books, for they teach me something; from the new I learn very little
There is a pleasure in not being pleased.
It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.
The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.
Let us therefore reject all superstition in order to become more human; but in speaking against fanaticism, let us not imitate the fanatics: they are sick men in delirium who want to chastise their doctors. Let us assuage their ills, and never embitter them, and let us pour drop by drop into their souls the divine balm of toleration, which they would reject with horror if it were offered to them all at once.
An infallible method of making fanatics is to persuade before you instruct.
Our priests are not what a silly populace supposes; all their learning consists in our credulity.
The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
It is reported in the supplement of the council of Nicæan that the fathers, being very perplexed to know which were the cryphal or apocryphal books of the Old and New Testaments, put them all pell-mell on an altar, and the books to be rejected fell to the ground. It is a pity that this eloquent procedure has not survived.
Injustice in the end produces independence.
Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.
The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.
Opinion is called the queen of the world; it is so, for when reason opposes it, it is condemned to death. It must rise twenty times from its ashes to gradually drive away the usurper.
Men are in general so tricky, so envious, and so cruel that when we find one who is only weak, we are too happy.
Will is wish, and liberty is power.
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