Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire
Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.
Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.
Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.
Common sense is not so common.
God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.
We must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest.
Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.
Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.
No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.
Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.
It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.
When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.
It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.
God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.
All men are born with a nose and five fingers, but no one is born with a knowledge of God.
The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.
A witty saying proves nothing.
It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.
Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.
We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature.
We are rarely proud when we are alone.
Better is the enemy of good.
Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.
Injustice in the end produces independence.
Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?
Tears are the silent language of grief.
Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.
The secret of being a bore... is to tell everything.
Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.
To hold a pen is to be at war.
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.
Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.
Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
