2026 Reading Challenge

DHelton > DHelton's Quotes

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  • #1
    Voltaire
    “Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.”
    ― Voltaire, Candide
    1309 likes

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  • #2
    Voltaire
    “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: answers, man, questions, thinking
    4626 likes

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  • #3
    Voltaire
    “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: double-standards, ethics, governments, humor, irony, killing, law, mankind, morality, murder, nationalism, nations, war
    4085 likes

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  • #4
    Voltaire
    “I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”
    ― Voltaire, Candide, or, Optimism
    tags: mortality
    1611 likes

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  • #5
    Voltaire
    “Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: guilt
    1286 likes

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  • #6
    Voltaire
    “Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies."
    (Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.)”
    ― Voltaire
    1141 likes

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  • #7
    Voltaire
    “It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
    ― Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV
    tags: dissent, freedom-of-thought, heresy
    1073 likes

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  • #8
    Voltaire
    “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: doubt
    833 likes

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  • #9
    Voltaire
    “The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.”
    ― Voltaire
    787 likes

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  • #10
    Voltaire
    “It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.”
    ― Voltaire, Zadig et autres contes
    tags: condemnation, guilt, innocence, judgment, justice, mercy, reasonable-doubt, verdict
    777 likes

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  • #11
    Voltaire
    “Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.”
    ― Voltaire, Traité sur la tolérance, à l'occasion de la mort de Jean Calas
    tags: freedom-of-thought, independence-of-thought, thinking, tolerance, voltaire
    719 likes

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  • #12
    Voltaire
    “Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: denial, fear, reality, truth, truth-hurts, truth-quotes, truths
    847 likes

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  • #13
    Voltaire
    “The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: self-delusion
    492 likes

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  • #14
    Voltaire
    “Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: philosophy-of-life
    651 likes

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  • #15
    Voltaire
    “Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.”
    ― Voltaire, Candide
    tags: optimism
    480 likes

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  • #16
    Voltaire
    “You're a bitter man," said Candide.
    That's because I've lived," said Martin.”
    ― Voltaire, Candide
    512 likes

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  • #17
    Voltaire
    “We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: life, waiting
    460 likes

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  • #18
    Voltaire
    “It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.”
    ― Voltaire
    353 likes

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  • #19
    Voltaire
    “Man is free at the instant he wants to be.”
    ― Voltaire
    338 likes

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  • #20
    Voltaire
    “Sensual pleasure passes and vanishes, but the friendship between us, the mutual confidence, the delight of the heart, the enchantment of the soul, these things do not perish and can never be destroyed.”
    ― Voltaire
    334 likes

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  • #21
    Voltaire
    “Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.”
    ― Voltaire
    276 likes

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  • #22
    Voltaire
    “The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: gospel-truth
    267 likes

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  • #23
    Voltaire
    “It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: argument, belief, monster, opinion, philosophy
    329 likes

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  • #24
    Voltaire
    “I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley -- in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered -- or simply to sit here and do nothing?'
    That is a hard question,' said Candide.”
    ― Voltaire, Candide
    tags: candide, voltaire
    309 likes

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  • #25
    Voltaire
    “I loved him as we always love for the first time; with idolatry and wild passion.”
    ― Candide
    tags: love, passion
    222 likes

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  • #26
    Voltaire
    “Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.”
    ― Voltaire
    249 likes

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  • #27
    Voltaire
    “One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: illusion, optimism, status-quo
    242 likes

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  • #28
    Voltaire
    “May God defend me from my friends: I can defend myself from my enemies. ”
    ― Voltaire
    250 likes

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  • #29
    Voltaire
    “Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.”
    ― Voltaire
    206 likes

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  • #30
    Voltaire
    “Do you believe,' said Candide, 'that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?'
    Do you believe,' said Martin, 'that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?”
    ― Voltaire, Candide
    261 likes



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