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Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.
Work banishes those three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty.
Common sense is not so common.
VOLTAIRE, Dictionnaire Philosophique
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: the mad daughter of a wise mother.
O superstition! Your inflexible rigours deprive humanity of the most sensitive hearts.
VOLTAIRE, Fanatacism, or Mahomet the Prophet
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.
VOLTAIRE, quoted in William R. Shad's The Whole Truth
Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create.
VOLTAIRE, "Physicians," Philosophical Dictionary
History can be well written only in a free country.
VOLTAIRE, letter to Frederick the Great
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