I decided to be happy, it is excellent for one's health.
Now is no time to be making new enemies. When asked on his deathbed by a priest to renounce the devil and turn to God.
History is the lie commonly agreed upon.
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
Prejudice is an opinion without judgement.
It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions. Letter to François-Louis-Henri Leriche (1770-02-06)
A witty saying proves nothing.
When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion. Letter to Mme. d'Épinal, Ferney (1760-12-26)
If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.
Love truth, but pardon error.
Man is free at the instant he wants to be.
Virtue debases itself in justifying itself.
No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.
The best is the enemy of the good.
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one. Letter to Frederick II of Prussia (1767-04-06)
Ours is assuredly the most ridiculous, the most absurd and the most bloody religion which has ever infected this world.
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
To hold a pen is to be at war.
