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Men appear to prefer ruining one another's fortunes, and cutting each other's throats about a few paltry villages, to extending the grand means of human happiness.
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
Humans
Appear
Throats
Mean
Fortune
Villages
Men
Cutting
Fortunes
Happiness
Extending
War
Grand
Means
Throat
Another
Village
Paltry
Human
Prefer
Ruining
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I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.
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Let us read, and let us dance — these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.
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Faith consists in believing not what seems true, but what seems false to our understanding.
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Clever tyrants are never punished.
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If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two, they would cut each other's throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness.
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Among the illusions which have invested our civilization is an absolute belief that the solutions to our problems must be a more determined application of rationally organized expertise... The reality is that our problems are largely the product of that application.
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It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.
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When we cannot use the compass of mathematics or the torch of experience...it is certain we cannot take a single step forward.
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Reading nurtures the soul, and an enlightened friend brings it solace.
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He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity.
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It is vain for the coward to flee death follows close behind it is only by defying it that the brave escape.
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