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The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
Voltaire
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Voltaire
Age: 84 †
Born: 1694
Born: February 20
Died: 1778
Died: May 30
Author
Autobiographer
Correspondent
Diarist
Encyclopédistes
Essayist
Historian
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Political Scientist
Paris
France
François-Marie Arouet
Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire
Francois Marie Arouet
Dictator of Letters
Tyrants
Tyranny
Politics
Government
Best
Tempered
Assassination
Benevolent
Occasional
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Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.
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Nothing could be smarter, more splendid, more brilliant, better drawn up than two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, cannons, formed a harmony such as never been heard in hell.
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Let all the laws be clear, uniform and precise for interpreting laws is almost always to corrupt them.
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Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.
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Change everything except your loves.
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I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.
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We offer up prayers to god only because we have made him after our own image. We treat him like a pasha, or a sultan, who is capable of being exasperated and appeased.
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Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively.
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This is no time to be making new enemies.
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The wicked can have only accomplices, the voluptuous have companions in debauchery, self-seekers have associates, the politic assemble the factions, the typical idler has connections, princes have courtiers. Only the virtuous have friends.
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I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.
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A torch lighted in the forests of America set all Europe in conflagration.
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Wherever my travels may lead, paradise is where I am.
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