Voltaire

The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.

Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.

God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.

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

He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead.

In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure –tangible material prosperity in this world -is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism.

Then I realized that secrecy is actually to the detriment of my own peace of mind and self, and that I could still sustain my belief in privacy and be authentic and transparent at the same time. It was a pretty revelatory moment, and there’s been a liberating force that’s come from it.

Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

There is no daily chore so trivial that it cannot be made important by skipping it two days running.

Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts.

People who use time wisely spend it on activities that advance their overall purpose in life.

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.

We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.

Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence – neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish – it is an imponderably valuable gift.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone.