Quotes By Person: Voltaire

“'Do you believe that men have always slaughtered each other as they do today, that they've always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates and thieves, weak, fickle, cowardly, envious, greedy, drunken, miserly, ambitious, bloodthirsty, slanderous, lecherous, fanatical, hypocritical and foolish?'

'Do you believe that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they find them?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Well, then, if hawks have always had the same character, what makes you think men have changed theirs?'”

-Candide, Voltaire

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“'What's optimism?'

'Alas, it's a mania for insisting that everything is all right when everything is going wrong.'”

-Candide, Voltaire

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“'[I]s there not pleasure in criticizing, in finding faults where other men think they see beauty?'
'That is to say,' said Martin, 'that there is pleasure in not being pleased.'”

-Candide, Volatire

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“The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.”

-Discours en vers sur l'homme, Voltaire

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“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”

-Letter to Frederick William, Prince of Russia, Voltaire

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“It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.”

-Notebooks, Voltaire

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