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It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.
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
Species
Poverty
Another
Subordinates
Real
Misfortune
Men
Dependence
Misfortunes
Inequality
Connected
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The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.
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Everything I see about me is sowing the seeds of a revolution that is inevitable, though I shall not have the pleasure of seeing it. The lightning is so close at hand that it will strike at the first chance, and then there will be a pretty uproar. The young are fortunate, for they will see fine things.
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Where there is friendship, there is our natural soil.
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All the persecutors declare against each other mortal war, while the philosopher, oppressed by them all, contents himself with pitying them.
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The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.
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Optimism, said Cacambo, What is that? Alas! replied Candide, It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.
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I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc. It does not behoove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indians and Chinese peoples were civilized and learned, to dispute their antiquity.
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You have no control over the hand that life deals you, but how you play that hand is entirely up to you.
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Use, do not abuse neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
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You see, Mademoiselle, I have experience, I know the world. To pass the time, why don't you ask every passenger to tell you his life's story? And if there is a single one among them who has never cursed his life, who has not often told himself that he was the unhappiest of men, then you may throw me overboard, headfirst!
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Everything can be borne except contempt.
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Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities.
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Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.
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All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.
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So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbors. The citizen of the universe would be the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer.
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The best way to be boring is to include everything.
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I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.
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