2026 Reading Challenge

Matt Franklin > Matt's Quotes

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  • #1
    Voltaire
    “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: absurdities, atheism, atrocities, barbarity, injustice, religion, skepticism
    3174 likes

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  • #2
    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
    1612 likes

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  • #3
    Voltaire
    “Love truth, but pardon error.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: truth
    1426 likes

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  • #4
    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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  • #5
    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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  • #6
    Voltaire
    “The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: inspirational
    972 likes

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  • #7
    Voltaire
    “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, Philosophical Dictionary
    tags: conformism, disregard, ignorance, innovation, persecution, reformers, trailblazers
    571 likes

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  • #8
    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
    848 likes

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  • #9
    Voltaire
    “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: doubt
    833 likes

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  • #10
    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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  • #11
    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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  • #12
    Voltaire
    “No opinion is worth burning your neighbor for.”
    ― Voltaire
    346 likes

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  • #13
    Voltaire
    “It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.”
    ― Voltaire
    353 likes

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  • #14
    Voltaire
    “The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us”
    ― Voltaire
    305 likes

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  • #15
    Voltaire
    “Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.”
    ― Voltaire, Candide
    tags: boredom, evil, greed, labor, need, vice, want, weariness, work
    290 likes

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  • #16
    Voltaire
    “It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: ignorance, knowledge, virginity, virtue
    197 likes

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  • #17
    Voltaire
    “To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid - one must also be polite.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: success
    198 likes

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  • #18
    Voltaire
    “We are rarely proud when we are alone.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: pride
    175 likes

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  • #19
    Voltaire
    “It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.”
    ― Voltaire
    203 likes

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  • #20
    Voltaire
    “I read only to please myself, and enjoy only what suits my taste.”
    ― Voltaire, Candide and Other Tales
    168 likes

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  • #21
    Voltaire
    “If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated."

    (Notebooks)”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: agnostic, atheism, idolatry, religion
    172 likes

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  • #22
    Voltaire
    “Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively.”
    ― Voltaire
    160 likes

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  • #23
    Voltaire
    “If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other’s throats; but if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace”
    ― Voltaire
    143 likes

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  • #24
    Voltaire
    “The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: philosophy
    119 likes

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  • #25
    Voltaire
    “Men argue. Nature acts.”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: climate-change, man, nature
    132 likes

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  • #26
    Voltaire
    “Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.”
    ― Voltaire, Candide
    129 likes

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  • #27
    Voltaire
    “Is politics nothing other than the art of deliberately lying?”
    ― Voltaire
    tags: contant-d-orval, volume
    112 likes

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  • #28
    Voltaire
    “The more a man knows, the less he talks.”
    ― Voltaire
    134 likes

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  • #29
    Voltaire
    “Let us work without reasoning,' said Martin; 'it is the only way to make life endurable.”
    ― Voltaire, Candide
    tags: life, work
    113 likes

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  • #30
    Voltaire
    “Being unable to make people more reasonable, I preferred to be happy away from them”
    ― Voltaire
    110 likes



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Tags From Matt’s Quotes

absurdities
atheism
atrocities
barbarity
injustice
religion
skepticism
mortality
truth
dissent
freedom-of-thought
heresy
inspirational
conformism
disregard
ignorance
innovation
persecution
reformers
trailblazers
denial
fear
reality
truth-hurts
truth-quotes
truths
doubt
self-delusion
argument
belief
monster
opinion
philosophy
boredom
evil
greed
labor
need
vice
want
weariness
work
knowledge
virginity
virtue
success
pride
agnostic
idolatry
climate-change
man
nature
contant-d-orval
volume
life