VOLTAIRE - Premium Collection Quotes

“A true god surely cannot have been born of a girl, nor died on the gibbet, nor be eaten in a piece of dough... [or inspired] books, filled with contradictions, madness, and horror.”
― Voltaire, The Works: Voltaire

“Can you really believe that a drop of urine is an infinity of monads, and that each of these has ideas, however obscure, of the universe as a whole?”
― Voltaire, Œuvres complètes - 109 titres et annexes

“If religion was necessary to all men, it ought to be intelligible to all men.”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“Would they not have the right to complain of a God who, having the power of leaving them in oblivion, brought them forth, although He foresaw very well that His justice would force Him sooner or later to punish them?”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“If He resolved in His decrees to allow this fall, there is no doubt that He desired it to take place: otherwise it would not have happened.”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“How is it that we have succeeded in persuading reasonable beings that the thing most impossible to understand was the most essential for them. It is because they were greatly frightened; it is because when men are kept in fear they cease to reason; it is because they have been expressly enjoined to distrust their reason. When the brain is troubled, we believe everything and examine nothing.”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“Can men differently organized and modified by diverse circumstances, agree in regard to an imaginary being which exists but in their own brains?”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“It is always the character of man which decides upon the character of his God; each one creates a God for himself, and in his own image.”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“Morality needs a firmer basis than the example of a God whose conduct varies, and whom we can not call good but by obstinately closing the eyes to the evil which He causes, or permits to be done in this world.”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“If He condescends to show Himself to some men, He takes care to keep all the others in invincible ignorance of His divine intentions.”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“I prefer to be annihilated at once rather than to burn forever;”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“Is not the idea of total annihilation infinitely preferable to the idea of an eternal existence accompanied with suffering and gnashing of teeth?”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“Those who find the idea of another life so flattering and so sweet, have they then forgotten that this other life, according to them, is to be accompanied by torments for the majority of mortals?”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“Are not theologians strange reasoners? As soon as they can not guess the natural causes of things, they invent causes, which they call supernatural;”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“I exist, you will say; but is this existence always a benefit?”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“In what way can we recognize the tenderness of a Father who created the majority of His children but for the purpose of dragging out a life of pain, anxiety, and bitterness upon this earth?”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“You believe yourselves free because you do as you choose; but are you really free to will or not to will, to desire or not to desire? Your wills and your desires, are they not necessarily excited by objects or by qualities which do not depend upon you at all?”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“If it is true that God intends to form in heaven a court of saints, of chosen ones, or of men who have lived in this world according to His views, would He not have had a court more numerous, more brilliant, and more honorable to Him, if it were composed of all the men to whom, in creating them, He could have granted the degree of goodness necessary to obtain eternal happiness?”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“But if God could not render him sinless, why did He take the trouble of creating man, whose nature was to become corrupt, and which, consequently, had to offend God?”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“If there exists a God who could be offended or blasphemed, there would not be upon earth any greater blasphemers than those who dare to say that this God is perverse enough to take pleasure in dooming His feeble creatures to useless torments for all eternity.”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“How can we face without fear, a God whom we suppose sufficiently barbarous to wish to damn us forever?”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“Why must man exist What is his existence to God? Nothing or something. If his existence is not useful or necessary to God, why did He not leave him in nothingness? If man's existence is necessary to His glory, He then needed man, He lacked something before this man existed!”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“Very few people in the world would have a God if care had not been taken to give them one.”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“Then they must prove that it is possible for a just God to punish men cruelly for having been in a state of madness, which prevented them from believing in the existence of a being whom their enlightened reason could not comprehend.”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“He who from his childhood has had a habit of trembling every time he heard certain words, needs these words, and needs to tremble. In this way he is more disposed to listen to the one who encourages his fears than to the one who would dispel his fears.”
― Voltaire, The Collected Works of Voltaire: PergamonMedia

“The weak mind receives impressions without resistance, embraces opinions without examination, is alarmed without cause, and tends naturally to superstition.”
― Voltaire, VOLTAIRE - Premium Collection: Novels, Philosophical Writings, Historical Works, Plays, Poems & Letters (60+ Works in One Volume) - Illustrated: Enlightenment Wit

“Fanaticism is, in reference to superstition, what delirium is to fever, or rage to anger.”
― Voltaire, VOLTAIRE - Premium Collection: Novels, Philosophical Writings, Historical Works, Plays, Poems & Letters (60+ Works in One Volume) - Illustrated: Enlightenment Wit

“He then represented to himself the human species, as it really is, as a parcel of insects devouring one another on a little atom of clay.”
― Voltaire, Collected Works of Voltaire

“He assembled at his house the most worthy men, and the most beautiful ladies of Babylon. He gave them delicious suppers, often preceded by concerts of music, and always animated by polite conversation, from which he knew how to banish that affectation of wit, which is the surest method of preventing it entirely, and of spoiling the pleasure of the most agreeable society.”
― Voltaire, Collected Works of Voltaire

“The register, the attorneys, and bailiffs, went to his house with great formality to carry him back his four hundred ounces. They only retained three hundred and ninety-eight of them to defray the expenses of justice; and then their servants demanded their fees. Zadig”
― Voltaire, Collected Works of Voltaire