It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.- The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.
- In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
- The tyranny of the many would be when one body takes over the rights of others, and then exercises its power to change the laws in its favor.
- It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
- All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws.
- The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
- It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
- The monster, fanaticism, still exists, and whoever seeks after truth will run the risk of being persecuted.
...So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. - 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.
- Let the laws be clear, uniform and precise; to interpret laws is almost always to corrupt them.
- (False): I may not agree with what you say, but to the death I will defend your right to say it.
- The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.
- Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others to persecute those who do reason.
- Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value -- zero.
- History is fables agreed upon.
- Your book is dedicated by the soundest reason. You had better get out of France as quickly as you can.
- What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly -- that is the first law of nature.
- God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
- Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
- The superfluous is very necessary.
- It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
- It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
- We are all full of weakness and errors, let us mutually pardon each other our follies. It is the first law of nature.
- Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
- It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships, that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.
- The secret of being tiresome is to tell everything.
- We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.
- Liberty is not and cannot be anything but the power of doing what we will.
- It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.
- Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.
- I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.
- What is not in nature can never be true.
"It is dangerous to disagree with government.. and it is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." Voltaire
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
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