“If religion no longer gives birth to civil wars, it is to philosophy alone that we are indebted... Without philosophy, we would be little above the animals.”

Chapters: 31. Victory Funeral

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“Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.”

Chapters: 38. Fruit Over Flowers

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“Common sense is not so common.”

Chapters: 21. Following Empty Heart

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“Dare to think for yourself.”

Chapters: 38. Fruit Over Flowers

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“Don't think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money.”

Chapters: 44. Fame and Fortune

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“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”

Chapters: 65. Simplicity: the Hidden Power of Goodness

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“He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.”

Chapters: 15. Inscrutability

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“I don’t know where I am going, but I am on my way.”

Chapters: 81. Journey Without Goal

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

Chapters: 31. Victory Funeral

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“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”

Chapters: 48. Unlearning

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“Love truth, but pardon error.”

Chapters: 63. Easy as Hard

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“Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.”

Chapters: 16. Returning to the Root, Meditation

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“Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies.”

Chapters: 24. Unnecessary Baggage

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“The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.”

Chapters: 57. Wu Wei

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“The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.”

Chapters: 46. Enough

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“The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.”

Chapters: 79. No Demands

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“The more a man knows, the less he talks.”

Chapters: 56. One with the Dust

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“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”

Chapters: 67. Three Treasures

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“The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.”

Chapters: 50. Claws and Swords

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“The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.”

Chapters: 70. Inscrutable

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“What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on…”

Chapters: 65. Simplicity: the Hidden Power of Goodness

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“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

Chapters: 18. The Sick Society

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“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”

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“There are no real pleasures without real needs.”

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“Sexual love is the material of nature embroidered by the imagination.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“When one has destroyed an error, there is always someone who resuscitates it. One must combat ceaselessly.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“Clerics and vicars, ignorant imbeciles, whom other ignoramuses who libel and slander the Mohammedan religion saying it is voluptuos and sensual; there is not a word of truth in it, you have been deceived on this point as on so many others.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“Christians tricked, hated, excommunicated, condemned, and denounced each other because of unintelligible, minute differences in dogma that no one could understand. And that’s why they slaughtered each other over and over again.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“The best form of government? The rich will tell you an aristocracy, the people will reply a democracy; kings along prefer royalty. Why then is almost all the world governed by monarchs? Men are rarely worthy of governing themselves.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“To wish for the greatness of our own country is often to wish evil to neighboring countries. Those who wish their own country to be neither greater or smaller, richer or poorer are true citizens of the universe.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“All men would be equal had they been without wants; it is the misery attached to our species which subordinates one man to another; inequality is not the real misfortune, it's dependence... why should servants be sought for when no service is required.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“After building a shed at the end of my garden, I heard an ant and a mole arguing. The mole said, 'What a fine structure, it must have been a very powerful mole who built this.' The ant replied, 'You must be joking. This builder is obviously an an ant of mighty genius.'”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“From all those ideas which have crowded into my brain in conflict with each other, I have obtained nothing but uncertainty. However, it is much more sad and foolish for a man to believe he knows what in fact he does not.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“I want my lawyer, my tailor, my servants, even my wife to believe in God, because it means that I shall be cheated and robbed and cuckolded less often. ... If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”

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“Doctors put drugs of which they know little into bodies of which they know less for diseases of which they know nothing at all.”

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“In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.”

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“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”

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“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”

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“God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh, a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.”

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“Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”

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“The Inquisition is well known to be an admirable and truly Christian invention for increasing the power of the popes and monks, and rendering the population of a whole kingdom hypocrites.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“Books rule the world... [and] it is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part.”

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“If Xenophon had no other merit than that of being the friend of the martyr Socrates, he would be interesting; but he was also a warrior, philosopher, poet, historian, agriculturist, and charming in society.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“One day everything will be well—that is our hope.
Everything's fine today—that is our delusion.”

from Poéme sur le désastre de Lisbonne, 1756

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“Your religion, although it has some good points, such as worship of the great Being, and the necessity of being just and charitable, is otherwise nothing but a rehash of Judaism and a tedious collection of fairy tales. If the archangel Gabriel had brought the leaves of the Koran to Mahomet from some planet, all Arabia would have seen Gabriel come down : nobody saw him; therefore Mahomet was a brazen impostor who deceived imbeciles.”

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“Tell me if there have been peoples other than the Christians and the Jews in whom zeal and religion wretchedly transformed into fanaticism, have inspired so many horrible cruelties…. Yes, the Mohammedans… As for the other nations there has not been one right from the existence of the world which has ever made a purely religious war.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“What has the vain science of words to do with the morality which should guide your actions?”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“If you could ask a toad, 'What is beauty?', he would reply that it is a female with two big round eyes coming out of her little head”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“Dante was a madman, and his work is a monstrosity. He has many commentators, and therefore cannot be understood. His reputation will go on increasing, for no one ever reads him.”

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“Shakespeare is a barbarian who wrote monstrous farces called tragedies.”

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“Who was the greatest man? Without doubt it was Isaac Newton for it was him who mastered our minds by the force of truth and deserves our reverence, not the Caesars, Alexanders, and Cromwells who enslave our minds with violence and war.”

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“To wish the greatness of our own country is often to wish evil to our neighbors. He who could bring himself to wish that his country should always remain as it is, would be a citizen of the universe.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“He does not join any of the sects which all contradict one another. His religion is most ancient and the most widespread... to do good is his worship... he succors the indigent and defends the oppressed.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.”

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“Atheism and fanaticism are two monsters which may tear society to pieces; but the atheist preserves his reason which checks his propensity to mischief while the fanatic is under the influence of a madness which is constantly urging him on”

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“no one has ever employed so much intellect to persuade men to be beasts. In reading your work one is seized with a desire to walk on 4 paws. However, as it is more than 60 years since I lost that habit, I feel, unfortunately, that it is impossible for me to resume it...”

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“When I see Christians cursing Jews, methinks I see children beating their fathers.”

from Notebooks

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“The superfluous is very necessary.”

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“If 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.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“[Virgil] The Delight of all Ages, and the Pattern of all Poets.

”

from ​An Essay on Epic Poetry (1727)

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“What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.”

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“History in general is a collection of crimes, follies, and misfortunes among which we have now and then met with a few virtues, and some happy times... The history of the great events of this world are scarcely more than the history of crimes.”

from Essay on the Morals and the Spirit of Nations

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“War is the greatest of all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who does not color his crime with the pretext of justice.”

from The Ignorant Philosopher

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“Notwithstanding the veneration due and paid to Homer, it is very strange, yet true, that among the most learned, and the greatest admirers of antiquity, there is scarce one to be found who ever read the Iliad with that eagerness and rapture which a woman feels when she reads the Novel of Zaïda... The common part of mankind is awed with the fame of Homer, rather than struck with his beauties.”

from Essay on Epick Poetry (1727)

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“'That's well said,' replied Candide, 'but we must cultivate our garden.'”

from Candide

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“It is not enough to conquer; one must know how to seduce.”

from Mérope (1743)

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“Opinion is called the queen of the world; it is so, for when reason opposes it, it is condemned to death. It must rise 20 times from its ashes to gradually drive away the usurper.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in eternal awareness or pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.”

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“expelled without a penny and obliged to continue the abominable occupation which to you men seems so amusing and which to us in nothing but an abyss of misery... Ah! sir, if you could imagine what it is to be forced to caress impartially an old tradesman, a lawyer, a monk, a gondolier, an abbé; to be exposed to every insult and outrage; to be reduced often to borrow a petticoat in order to go and find some disgusting man who will lift it...”

from Candide

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“in her arms I enjoyed the delights of Paradise which have produced the tortures of Hell by which you see I am devoured”

from Candide

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“A million drilled assassins go from one end of Europe to the other murdering and robbing with discipline in order to earn their bread, because there is no more honest occupation”

from Candide

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“France... I have traversed several provinces. In some half the inhabitants are crazy, in others they are too artful, in some they are usually quite gentle and stupid, and in others they think they are clever, in all of them the chief occupation is making love, the second sandal-mongering, and the third talking nonsense... Paris... is a chaos, a throng where everybody hunts for pleasure and hardly anybody finds it”

from Candide

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“You can easily guess that when a man has spent a month in Eldorado he cares to see nothing else in the world but Madame Cunegonde.”

from Candide

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“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 stupid?”

from Candide

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“I think that everything goes awry with us, that nobody knows his office nor what he is doing, nor what he ought to do. Almost all of their time is passed in senseless quarrels: Jansenists with Molinists, lawyers with churchmen, men of letters with men of letters, courtiers with courtiers, financiers with the people, wives with husbands, relatives with relatives—it's an eternal war.”

from Candide

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“Let us work without theorizing, 'tis the only way to make life endurable. Man was not born for idleness and work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.”

from Candide

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“There have been arm-chair philosophers in France; and all of them, with the exception of Montaigne, have been persecuted... the last degree of the malignity of our nature is to oppress those very philosophers who would correct it.”

from Notebooks (1952)

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“Perhaps never was there a wiser mind, a more methodical understanding, nor a more exact logician than Locke, even though he was not a great mathematician.”

from Philosophical Letters (1730)

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“The divine Anaxagoras who had altars erected to him for teaching men that the sun was bigger than the Peloponnessus, that snow was black, that the sky was of stone, affirmed that the soul sas an aerial spirit, though immortal.”

from Philosophical Letters (1730)

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“Diogenes, a different person from him who became a cynic after having been a counterfeiter, asserted that the soul was a portion of the very substance of God, a notion which was at least striking.”

from Philosophical Letters (1730)

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“Aristotle—whose works have been interpreted a thousand different ways because they were unintelligible—was of the opinion, if we may trust some of his disciples, that the understanding of all men was but one and the same substance.”

from Philosophical Letters (1730)

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“Epicurus maintained that the soul is composed of parts, in the same manner as bodies.”

from Philosophical Letters (1730)

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“The divine Plato, master of the divine Aristotle, and the divine Socrates, master of the divine Plato, said that the soul was at the same time corporeal and eternal.”

from Philosophical Letters (1730)

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“Descartes—born to discover the errors of antiquity but also to substitute his own in their place, and dragged along by that systematic spirit which blinds the greatest men—imagined he had demonstrated that the soul was the same thing as thought.”

from Philosophical Letters (1730)

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“The Emperor Constantine was a villain; a patricide who had smothered his wife in a bath, cut his son's throat, assassinated his father-in-law, his brother-in-law, and his nephew. A man puffed up with pride and immersed in pleasure, a detestable tyrant like his children—but he was a man of sense. He would not have obtained the Empire and subdued all his rivals had he not reasoned justly.”

from Philosophical Letters (1730)

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“those who walk in the beaten path always throw stones at those who would show them a new way”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“As soon as you remove the difficulty, you remove the merit.”

from Translator's Preface to Julius Cesar

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“The stoics should inspire a more firm and magnanimous virtue than our religion. They directed self-love to the love of virtue for itself. Christianity tells you after 30 years of crimes that a good confession is enough.”

from Notebooks

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“Men who seek happiness are like drunkards who can never find their house but are sure that they have one.”

from Notebooks

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“Religion is not a restraint; on the contrary it is an encouragement to crime. Every religion is based on expiations.”

from Notebooks

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“Cicero... He was a tender friend, a zealous citizen, the best philosopher of his time; intrepid in the days of the conspiracy... He was not exiled as was Demosthenes for allowing himself to be corrupted but for having saved the country.”

from Notebooks

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“It is one of the superstitions of mankind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.”

from Notebooks

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“A Sermon Preached Before Fleas
My dear fleas, you are the cherished work of god; and this entire universe has been made for you. God created man only to serve as your food, the sun only to light your way, the stars only to please your sight, etc.”

from Notebooks

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“Mr. Pope, the best poet of England, and at present of all the world. I hope you are acquainted enough with the English tongue to be sensible of all the charms of his works... I never saw so amiable an imagination, so gentle graces, so great variety, so much wit, and so refined knowledge of the world”

from Letters

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“If Machiavelli had had a prince for disciple, the first thing he would have reommended him to do would have been to write a book against Machiavellism.”

from Memoirs

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“Prejudice is an opinion without judgment.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“To do good is his worship... The Mohammedan cries out , 'Beware if you fail to make the pilgrimage to Mecca!'–the priest, 'Curses on you if you do not make the trip to Notre Dame'... He succors the indigent and defends those oppressed.”

from Philosophical Dictionary

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“Venerable patriarch of French letters, the glory of France, defender of a hundred victims of intolerant creeds and unjust laws; Voltaire's crowning and redeeming virtue was his humanity. He stirred the conscience of Europe, he denounced war as 'the great illusion.' He could be irascible and break out in a temper; but, did his virtues outweigh his vices? Yes, and even if we do not place in the scale his intellectual with his moral qualities. Against his parsimony we must place his generosity, against his love of money his cheerful acceptance of losses and his readiness to share his gains.”

— Will (and Ariel) Durant 1885 – 1981 CE
from Rousseau and Revolution

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“Italy had a Renaissance, and Germany had a Reformation, but France had Voltaire; he was for his country both Renaissance and Reformation, and half the Revolution. He was first and best in his time in his conception and writing of history, in the grace of his poetry, in the charm and wit of his prose, in the range of his thought and his influence. His spirit moved like a flame over the continent and the century, and stirs a million souls in every generation.”

— Will (and Ariel) Durant 1885 – 1981 CE

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“Voltaire said about God that ‘there is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night’. Hammurabi would have said the same about his principle of hierarchy, and Thomas Jefferson about human rights. Homo sapiens has no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights. But don’t tell that to our servants, lest they murder us at night.”

— Yuval Harari יובל נח הררי‎ 1976 CE –
Israeli historian, professor, and philosopher

from Sapiens

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“Voltaire began the great age of the Enlightenment. Things came to him dull and he made them radiant. Never did one man teach so many, or with such irresistible artistry. As all Europe bowed to the scepter of his pen, so the great leaders of the mind in later centuries honored him as the fountainhead of the intellectual enlightenment. If we forget to honor Voltaire, we become unworthy of freedom.”

— Will Durant 1885 – 1981 CE via Shan Dao
Philosophy apostle and popularizer of history's lessons
from Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time, 1968

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“Voltaire is without doubt a bad man, whom I do not intend to praise; but he has said and done so many good things that we should draw the curtain over his irregularities.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712 – 1778 CE

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“Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. Of that divine tear and that human smile is composed the sweetness of the present civilization.”

— Victor Hugo 1802 – 1885 CE
Literary pioneer, poet, and social justice provocateur
from Le centenaire de Voltaire, 1878​

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