"Society therefore is an ancient as the world."
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Quote collection
Voltaire quotes (page 27 of 36)
701 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Do 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?"
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"Virtue debases itself in justifying itself."
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"Luxury has been railed at for two thousand years, in verse and in prose, and it has always been loved."
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"Froth at the top, dregs at bottom, but the middle excellent."
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"I know of nothing more laughable than a doctor who does not die of old age."
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"Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent people."
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"Men will commit atrocities as long as they believe absurdities."
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"Christians have been the most intolerant of all men."
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"There is a pleasure in not being pleased."
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"We only half live when we only half think."
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"Perfect is the enemy of good."
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"We are obliged to place ourselves on the level of our age before we can rise above it."
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"The road to the heart is the ear"
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"Translations increase the faults of a work and spoil its beauties."
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"To succeed in chaining the multitude, you must seem to wear the same fetters."
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"Everything I see about me is sowing the seeds of a revolution that is inevitable, though I shall not have the pleasure of seeing it. The lightning is so close at hand that it will strike at the first chance, and then there will be a pretty uproar. The young are fortunate, for they will see fine things."
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"Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want."
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"It was decided by the university of Coimbre that the sight of several persons being slowly burned in great ceremony is an infallible secret for preventing earthquakes."
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"Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write."
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