Voltaire

I know nothing about Voltaire, really.

I was watching a Netflix series called “River” and the show is full of dead people quoting things and there was a quote from Voltaire that jumped out at me.

““It is forbidden to kill, therefore all murderers are punished, unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”

So anyway, I decided to look at the Wikiquotes from him and there were some interesting ones in there:

“If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.”

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

“It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.”

“There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.”

“Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.”

“Once your faith, sir, persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares to be absurd, beware lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life. In days gone by, there were people who said to us: “You believe in incomprehensible, contradictory and impossible things because we have commanded you to; now then, commit unjust acts because we likewise order you to do so.” Nothing could be more convincing. Certainly any one who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices. If you do not use the intelligence with which God endowed your mind to resist believing impossibilities, you will not be able to use the sense of injustice which God planted in your heart to resist a command to do evil. Once a single faculty of your soul has been tyrannized, all the other faculties will submit to the same fate. This has been the cause of all the religious crimes that have flooded the earth.”

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”

“Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.”

“The public is a ferocious beast: one must chain it up or flee from it.”

“Ancient histories, as one of our wits has said, are but fables that have been agreed upon.”

“The institution of religion exists only to keep mankind in order, and to make men merit the goodness of God by their virtue. Everything in a religion which does not tend towards this goal must be considered foreign or dangerous.”

I don’t know exactly how accurate they are but some interesting quotes.

And the show “River” is pretty interesting too.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire

• This topic was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by PA Ram.