Voltaire
Complete works (1880) : https://archive.org/details/oeuvresco...
In 1694, Age of Enlightenment leader Francois-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, was born in Paris. Jesuit-educated, he began writing clever verses by the age of 12. He launched a lifelong, successful playwriting career in 1718, interrupted by imprisonment in the Bastille. Upon a second imprisonment, in which Francois adopted the pen name Voltaire, he was released after agreeing to move to London. There he wrote Lettres philosophiques (1733), which galvanized French reform. The book also satirized the religious teachings of Rene Descartes and Blaise Pascal, including Pascal's famed "wager" on God. Voltaire wrote: "The interest I have in believing a thing is not a proof of the existence of that thing." Voltaire's French publisher was sent to the Bastille and Voltaire had to escape from Paris again, as judges sentenced the book to be "torn and burned in the Palace." Voltaire spent a calm 16 years with his deistic mistress, Madame du Chatelet, in Lorraine. He met the 27 year old married mother when he was 39. In his memoirs, he wrote: "I found, in 1733, a young woman who thought as I did, and decided to spend several years in the country, cultivating her mind." He dedicated Traite de metaphysique to her. In it the Deist candidly rejected immortality and questioned belief in God. It was not published until the 1780s. Voltaire continued writing amusing but meaty philosophical plays and histories. After the earthquake that leveled Lisbon in 1755, in which 15,000 people perished and another 15,000 were wounded, Voltaire wrote Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne (Poem on the Lisbon Disaster): "But how conceive a God supremely good/ Who heaps his favours on the sons he loves,/ Yet scatters evil with as large a hand?"
Voltaire purchased a chateau in Geneva, where, among other works, he wrote Candide (1759). To avoid Calvinist persecution, Voltaire moved across the border to Ferney, where the wealthy writer lived for 18 years until his death. Voltaire began to openly challenge Christianity, calling it "the infamous thing." He wrote Frederick the Great: "Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world." Voltaire ended every letter to friends with "Ecrasez l'infame" (crush the infamy — the Christian religion). His pamphlet, The Sermon on the Fifty (1762) went after transubstantiation, miracles, biblical contradictions, the Jewish religion, and the Christian God. Voltaire wrote that a true god "surely cannot have been born of a girl, nor died on the gibbet, nor be eaten in a piece of dough," or inspired "books, filled with contradictions, madness, and horror." He also published excerpts of Testament of the Abbe Meslier, by an atheist priest, in Holland, which advanced the Enlightenment. Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary was published in 1764 without his name. Although the first edition immediately sold out, Geneva officials, followed by Dutch and Parisian, had the books burned. It was published in 1769 as two large volumes. Voltaire campaigned fiercely against civil atrocities in the name of religion, writing pamphlets and commentaries about the barbaric execution of a Huguenot trader, who was first broken at the wheel, then burned at the stake, in 1762. Voltaire's campaign for justice and restitution ended with a posthumous retrial in 1765, during which 40 Parisian judges declared the defendant innocent. Voltaire urgently tried to save the life of Chevalier de la Barre, a 19 year old sentenced to death for blasphemy for failing to remove his hat during a religious procession. In 1766, Chevalier was beheaded after being tortured, then his body was burned, along with a copy of Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary. Voltaire's statue at the Pantheon was melted down during Nazi occupation. D. 1778.
Voltaire (1694-1778), pseudónimo de François-
“One always begins with the simple, then comes the complex, and by superior enlightenment one often reverts in the end to the simple. Such is the course of human intelligence.”
“So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbors. The citizen of the universe would be the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer.”
“Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. (The perfect is the enemy of the good.)”
“Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.”
“Is politics nothing other than the art of deliberately lying?”
“Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”
“Perfect is the enemy of good.”
“What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.”
“To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd. ”
“Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.”
“Originality is nothing by judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.”
“It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it. ”
“History should be written as philosophy.”
“Everything's fine today, that is our illusion. ”
“Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is.”
“It must also be noted that until the present time this malady, like religious controversy, has been wholly confined to the continent of Europe.”
“Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.”
“One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.”
“You write your name in the snowYet say nothing.”
“Since the whole affair had become one of religion, the vanquished were of course exterminated.”
“Once the people begin to reason, all is lost. ”
“In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.”
“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”
“I was never ruined but twice: once when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I won one.”
“Prejudices are what fools use for reason.”
“Beware of the words "internal security," for they are the eternal cry of the oppressor.”
“May God defend me from my friends: I can defend myself from my enemies. ”
“What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on...”
“Answer me, you who believe that animals are only machines. Has nature arranged for this animal to have all the machinery of feelings only in order for it not to have any at all?”
“Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.”
“The best is the enemy of good.”
“Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.”
“It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.”
“The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.”
“No opinion is worth burning your neighbor for.”
“Mieux vaut un demon qu'on connait qu'un ange qu'on connait pas!”
“Let us cultivate our garden.”
“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”
“One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.”
“To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid - one must also be polite.”
“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.”
“This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.”
“The infinitely small have a pride infinitely great.”
“Minds differ still more than faces.”
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
“The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.”
“Cela est bien, repondit Candide, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.”
“Semakin aku banyak membaca, semakin aku banyak berpikir; semakin aku banyak belajar, semakin aku sadar bahwa aku tak mengetahui apa pun”
“By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.”
“It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.”