Mike Potter > Mike's Quotes

“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”
― Voltaire

“Common sense is not so common.”
― Voltaire, A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary

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

“I don’t know where I am going, but I am on my way.”
― Voltaire

“Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.”
― Voltaire

“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
― Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV

“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
― 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

“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

“It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.”
― 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

“Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.”
― 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

“He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.”
― Voltaire

“To hold a pen is to be at war.”
― Voltaire

“Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours. ”
― Voltaire

“When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.”
― Voltaire

“It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.”
― Voltaire

“Reading nurtures the soul, and an enlightened friend brings it solace. ”
― Voltaire

“Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her; but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.”
― Voltaire

“Doctors put drugs of which they know little into bodies of which they know less for diseases of which they know nothing at all.”
― Voltaire

“Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is.”
― Voltaire

“If there’s life on other planets, then the earth is the Universe’s insane asylum.”
― Voltaire

“The greatest consolation in life is to say what one thinks.”
― Voltaire

“Is politics nothing other than the art of deliberately lying?”
― Voltaire

“Let us work without reasoning,' said Martin; 'it is the only way to make life endurable.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.”
― Voltaire

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

“Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.”
― Voltaire

“Fools admire everything in an author of reputation.”
― Voltaire, Candide