Voltaire

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

How great, my friends, is the virtue of living upon a little!

At the end of the day, life is about being happy being who you are.

Most people do not pray; they only beg.

The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them.

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

If there be three distinct and separate Persons, then three distinct and separate Substances. . . . And since the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God . . . then unless the Father, Son and Spirit are three distinct Nothings, they must be three distinct Substances, and consequently three distinct Gods.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

None of us should be defined by the worst thing we’ve ever done.

There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself.