Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

When we hear news we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

Prejudice is opinion without judgement.

My life is a battle.

Men argue, nature acts.

Let us read and let us dance--two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.

After my recent brush with voicelessness, I thought I'd share with you a few thoughts about speech. Don't take it lightly my friends. If music is the pathway to the heart as Voltaire suggested, then speech is the pathway to other people. Live in silence and you live alone.

The pursuit of what is true and the practice of what is good are the two most important objects of philosophy.

The discover of what is true, and the practice of that which is good, are the two most important objects of philosophy.

Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is.

When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy.

It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.

Self-love is the instrument of our preservation.

Use, do not abuse neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

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.

May God defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.

If God created us in His image we have certainly returned the compliment.

The only way to compel men to speak good of us is to do it.

The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.

Men are equal it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy; the mad daughter of a wise mother.

Work is often the father of pleasure.

Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.

Doubt is not a pleasant mental state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men that the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship towers considerably above him who imagined innate ideas.

Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.

Regimen is superior to medicine.

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

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

Love truth, and pardon error.

All kinds are good except the kind that bores you.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

Every man is the creature of the age in which he lives; very few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.

It is not known precisely where angels dwell -- whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.

Animals have these advantages over man: They have no theologians to instruct them, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.

A long dispute means that both parties are wrong

Weakness on both sides is, the motto of all quarrels.

In this country it's a good thing to kill an admiral now and then to encourage the others.

There's a Bible on the shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire-poison and antidote.

All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

The Pope is an idol whose hands are tied and whose feet are kissed.

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.