{"quotes":[{"text":"For all the enlightened nations that profess a loyalty to liberty, democracy, economy and all the rest, there has long been a readiness to look for a chosen one; as Carlyle pointed out, even the French, those great anti-venerators, those relentless beheaders of Great Men, worshipped Voltaire.","author":"Chris Anderson","tags":["beheading","chosen","democracy","great-men","leaders","liberty","soccer","the-french","voltaire"],"id":38709,"author_id":"Chris+Anderson"},{"text":"Quand celui à qui l'on parle ne comprend pas et celui qui parle ne se comprend pas, c'est de la métaphysiqueWhen he to whom a person speaks does not understand, and he who speaks does not understand himself, that is metaphysics.","author":"Voltaire","tags":["funny","gibberish","humor","metaphysics","nonsense","philosophy","sophistry","understanding","voltaire"],"id":51411,"author_id":"Voltaire"},{"text":"But he had expressed to Mme. Du Chatelet the hope that a way out might lie in applying philosophy to history, and endeavoring to trace, beneath the flux of political events, the history of the human mind. 'Only philosophers should write history,' he said. 'In all nations, history is disfigured by fable, till at last philosophy comes to enlighten man; and when it does finally arrive in the midst of darkness, it finds the human mind so blinded centuries of error, that it can hardly undeceive it; it finds ceremonies, facts and monuments, heaped up to prove lies.' 'History,' he concludes, 'is after all nothing but a pack of tricks which we play upon the dead;' we transform the past to suit our wishes for the future, and in the upshot 'history proves that anything can be proved by history.","author":"Will Durant","tags":["data","history","information","intellectual-history","narrative","past","philosophy","voltaire"],"id":58217,"author_id":"Will+Durant"},{"text":"And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious sarcasm of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable.","author":"Guy de Maupassant","tags":["irony","sarcasm","schopenhauer","voltaire"],"id":78978,"author_id":"Guy+de+Maupassant"},{"text":"I loved him as we always love for the first time.","author":"with idolatry and wild passion.","tags":["voltaire"],"id":79510,"author_id":"with+idolatry+and+wild+passion."},{"text":"My dear young lady, when you are in love, and jealous, and have been flogged by the Inquisition, there's no knowing what you may do.","author":"Voltaire","tags":["candide","inquisition","jealousy","spanish-inquisition","voltaire","whipping"],"id":88219,"author_id":"Voltaire"},{"text":"I only read books if Voltaire's cock has been dipped in red ink and rolled over the cover.","author":"Greg Proops","tags":["books","cock","cover","greg","humor","proops","read","red-ink","voltaire"],"id":98561,"author_id":"Greg+Proops"},{"text":"An opportunity fordoing an injury happens a hundred times a day, hut for doing good not once a year,' says Zoroaster.","author":"Voltaire","tags":["philosophy-of-life","voltaire","zoroaster","zoroastro"],"id":175946,"author_id":"Voltaire"},{"text":"Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.","author":"Voltaire","tags":["freedom-of-thought","independence-of-thought","thinking","tolerance","voltaire"],"id":253068,"author_id":"Voltaire"},{"text":"A jealous lover of human liberty, and deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.","author":"Mikhail Bakunin","tags":["abolish","abolish-god","antitheism","atheism","humanity","liberty","respect","voltaire"],"id":268382,"author_id":"Mikhail+Bakunin"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":19,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}