Voltaire

I hate women because they always know where things are.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.

Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

Do the thing we fear, and the death of fear is certain.

I talk democracy to these men and women. I tell them that they have the vote, and that theirs is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I say to them You are supreme: exercise your power. They say, That’s right: tell us what to do; and I tell them. I say Exercise our vote intelligently by voting for me. And they do. That’s democracy; and a splendid thing it is too for putting the right men in the right place.

Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?

Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.

I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.

The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.

The listlessness of it all, the profit off depression, the extinction of an entire species, the chlorinated connections- poisoned just to appear clean.

Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.

To be furious in religion is to be irreligiously religious.

Every person is a God in embryo. Its only desire is to be born.

Success must include two things: the development of an individual to his utmost potentiality and a contribution of some kind to one’s world.