"The true triumph of reason is that..." - Quote by Voltaire

“It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.”

“May God defend me from my friends: I can defend myself from my enemies.”

“People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines.... It appears to me, besides, that such people can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, and of all their affections. It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel.”

“When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire, and when again under the influence of its kindred desires it is moved with violent motion towards the beauty of corporeal forms, it acquires a surname from this very violent motion, and is called love.”

“If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries,I would give no man a reason upon compulsion.”

“He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.”

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

“The golden rule of conduct is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never all think alike and we shall see Truth in fragment and from different angles of vision.”

“Decency and tolerance, to be of any value, must be capable of withstanding the severest strain.”