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He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.
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
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Paris
France
François-Marie Arouet
Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire
Francois Marie Arouet
Dictator of Letters
Shines
Rank
Shining
Second
Firsts
First
Eclipsed
More quotes by Voltaire
You must have the devil in you to succeed in the arts.
Voltaire
All men are by nature free you have therefore an undoubted liberty to depart whenever you please, but will have many and great difficulties to encounter in passing the frontiers.
Voltaire
All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws
Voltaire
A fool is a person who guesses and gets it wrong, a clever man is one who guesses, regardless of time period, and gets it right.
Voltaire
Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world. Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense. If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.
Voltaire
It is reported in the supplement of the council of Nicæan that the fathers, being very perplexed to know which were the cryphal or apocryphal books of the Old and New Testaments, put them all pell-mell on an altar, and the books to be rejected fell to the ground. It is a pity that this eloquent procedure has not survived.
Voltaire
It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.
Voltaire
Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.
Voltaire
The superfluous, a very necessary thing.
Voltaire
How I like the boldness of the English, how I like the people who say what they think!
Voltaire
Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue they support the laws before destroying them.
Voltaire
It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
Voltaire
There are men who can think no deeper than a fact.
Voltaire
God created sex. Priests created marriage.
Voltaire
It requires ages to destroy a popular opinion.
Voltaire
Los Padres have everything and the people have nothing 'tis the masterpiece of reason and justice. For my part, I know nothing so divine as Los Padres who make war on Kings of Spain and Portugal and in Europe act as their confessors who here kill Spaniards and at Madrid send them to Heaven.
Voltaire
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.
Voltaire
If you wish to obtain a great name or to found an establishment, be completely mad but be sure that your madness corresponds with the turn and temper of your age.
Voltaire
Being a bird ain't all about flying and shitting from high places.
Voltaire
A lady of honor may be raped once, but it strengthens her virtue.
Voltaire
