Voltaire

Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

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

Society therefore is an ancient as the world.

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.

Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

We had the sky up there, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they was made or just happened.

Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.

There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.

Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

Very few people can afford to be poor.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

Every one is a genius, more or less. No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even a little unsound, and no one is so diseased but that some part of him will be healthy — so no man is so mentally and morally sound, but that he will be in part both mad and wicked; and no man is so mad and wicked but he will be sensible and honourable in part. In like manner there is no genius who is not also a fool, and no fool who is not also a genius.

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.

He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.