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Work keeps us from three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty.
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Work keeps away those three great evils: boredom, vice, and poverty.
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Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.
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In this best of all possible worlds... everything is for the best.
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It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection.
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Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.
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Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
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What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly from them.
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Clever tyrants are never punished.
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When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?
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I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.
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The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.
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I am not like a lady at the court of Versailles, who said: 'What a dreadful pity that the bother at the tower of Babel should have got language all mixed up; but for that, everyone would always have spoken French.'
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Whoever you are, behold your master,
He is, or was, or has to be.
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While loving glory so much how can you persist in a plan which will cause you to lose it?
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Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.
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All joys do not cause laughter; great pleasures are serious: pleasures of love do not make us laugh.
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Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.
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With the world, do not resort to injuries, but only to irony and gayety: injury revolts, while irony makes one reflect, and gayety disarms.
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It is a serious question among them whether they [Africans] are descended from monkeys or whether the monkeys come from them. Our wise men have said that man was created in the image of God. Now here is a lovely image of the Divine Maker: a flat and black nose with little or hardly any intelligence. A time will doubtless come when these animals will know how to cultivate the land well, beautify their houses and gardens, and know the paths of the stars: one needs time for everything.
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To hold a pen is to be at war.
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The Eternal has his designs from all eternity. If prayer is in accord with his immutable wishes, it is quite useless to ask of him what he has resolved to do. If one prays to him to do the contrary of what he has resolved, it is praying that he be weak, frivolous, inconstant; it is believing that he is thus, it is to mock him.
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We know many truths; we have discovered many useful inventions. Let us console ourselves for not knowing possible connections between a spider and the ring of Saturn, and continue examining what is within our reach.
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Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.
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What a fuss about an omelette!
When he heard of the burning of De l'esprit
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Quote of the day
About one-fifth of the people are against everything all the time.
Robert F. Kennedy
Voltaire
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Born:
November 21, 1694
Died:
May 30, 1778
(aged 83)
Bio:
François-Marie Arouet, famous using his pen name Voltaire, was a French writer, deist and philosopher.
Known for:
Candide (1759)
Zadig (1747)
L'Ingénu (1767)
Micromégas
Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)
Most used words:
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life
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