Voltaire Quotes

“It has been argued that in the eighteenth century a person with an annual income of 15,000 livres or more could be described as wealthy, and a person with an income of 30,000 livres or more could be described as extremely wealthy.1 If this benchmark is even roughly valid, it implies that when Voltaire became wealthy, after 1729, he became very, very, very wealthy.”
― Ian Davidson, Voltaire

“When I say “the voice of the public”, I do not mean that of the population at large, which is almost always absurd; that is not a human voice, it is a cry of brutes; I mean the collective voice of all the decent people who think, and who, over time, reach an infallible judgement.”
― Ian Davidson, Voltaire