Voltaire Quotes

We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them.

In the face of knowledge, science, and of the whole extent of radiant civilization, I cannot accept the presence in Turkey’s civilized community of people primitive enough to seek material and spiritual benefits in the guidance of sheikhs. The Turkish republic cannot be a country of sheikhs, dervishes and disciples.

Custom is the plague of wise men and the idol of fools.

Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes.

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

Believe me, the intellectual revolution is going on, and that has to come first before you see the political changes. That's where I'm very optimistic.

Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

Self-delusion is one of the funniest things there is.

With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.

Reformation, like education, is a journey, not a destination.

There is no slavery but ignorance.

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.

No one who lives in error is free.

The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his own way.

There is complete disdain for all that exists .... History, society, and the economics of present institutions are all minor issues in choosing a reform program ...

There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it.

More than a century has passed since science laid down sound propositions as to the origins of the universe, but how many have mastered them or possess the really scientific spirit of criticism? A few thousands at the outside, who are lost in the midst of hundreds of millions still steeped in prejudices and superstitions worthy of savages, who are consequently ever ready to serve as puppets for religious impostors.

We must moderate both opulence and indigence by raising the wages of the poor, improving their habits, and lifting them above ignorance, plunder, and theft.

We have traditions, attitudes, an attachment to social welfare and even if change is desirable, we won’t accept change overnight.

The Emancipation Proclamation was fraught with consequences, immediate and remote, such as human foresight could not penetrate…..

The wretched world lies now under the tyranny of foolishness; things [witches and witchcraft] are believed by Christians of such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen to believe.

In those parts of the world where learning and science have prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue.

Modernity, democracy, and change have enabled more and more Muslim women activists, and Muslim democrats all over the world, to realize they can work within the Islamic framework to find liberation within Islam…. We feel strongly that we have a right to reclaim our religion, to redefine it, and to make sure Islam is codified and implemented in ways that take into consideration the realities of women’s lives today.