Voltaire

The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.

It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

The pest of society are the egotist, they are dull and bright, sacred and profane, course and fine. It is a disease that like the flu falls on all constitutions.

I was born upon thy bank, river, my blood flows in thy stream, and thou meanderest forever. At the bottom of my dream.

There is a crack in everything God has made.

If you try to please everybody, somebody’s not going to like it.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

Where you stand depends on where you sit.

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.

Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation.

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

Shut your mouth, close your lips, and say something!

I think there’s a great beauty to having problems. That’s one of the ways we learn.