Voltaire Quotes About Atheism

We have collected for you the TOP of Voltaire's best quotes about Atheism! Here are collected all the quotes about Atheism starting from the birthday of the Writer – November 21, 1694! We hope you will be inspired to new achievements with our constantly updated collection of quotes. At the moment, this page contains 32 sayings of Voltaire about Atheism. We will be happy if you share our collection of quotes with your friends on social networks!
  • What! Have you no monks to teach, to dispute, to govern, to intrigue and to burn people who do not agree with them?

    Francois Voltaire (1977). “The Portable Voltaire”, p.192, Penguin
  • The atheists are for the most part imprudent and misguided scholars who reason badly who, not being able to understand the Creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis the eternity of things and of inevitability.

  • Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities.

  • Custom, law bent my first years to the religion of the happy Muslims. I see it too clearly: the care taken of our childhood forms our feelings, our habits, our belief. By the Ganges I would have been a slave of the false gods, a Christian in Paris, a Muslim here.

  • If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him; let us worship God through Jesus if we must - if ignorance has so far prevailed that this name can still be spoken in all seriousness without being taken as a synonym for rapine and carnage. Every sensible man, every honourable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.

  • A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without working at the expense of the rascals who work to live.

  • You will notice that in all disputes between Christians since the birth of the Church, Rome has always favored the doctrine which most completely subjugated the human mind and annihilated reason.

  • I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.

    Letter to M. Damilaville, 16 May 1767
  • If we would destroy the Christian religion, we must first of all destroy man's belief in the Bible.

  • Which is more dangerous: fanaticism or atheism? Fanaticism is certainly a thousand times more deadly; for atheism inspires no bloody passion whereas fanaticism does; atheism is opposed to crime and fanaticism causes crimes to be committed.

    Voltaire (2012). “Philosophical Dictionary”, p.42, Courier Corporation
  • If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.

    Voltaire's Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750),
  • All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.

  • The most genuine and efficacious charity is that which greases the paws of the priests; such charity covers a multitude of sins.

  • It is reported in the supplement of the council of Nicæan that the fathers, being very perplexed to know which were the cryphal or apocryphal books of the Old and New Testaments, put them all pell-mell on an altar, and the books to be rejected fell to the ground. It is a pity that this eloquent procedure has not survived.

  • Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent people.

  • It has taken seas of blood to drown the idol of despotism, but the English do not think they bought their laws too dearly.

  • Before receiving your instruction, I must tell you what happened to me one day. I had just had a closet built at the end of my garden. I heard a mole arguing with a cockchafer; 'Here's a fine structure,' said the mole, 'it must have been a very powerful mole who did this work.' 'You're joking,' said the cockchafer; 'it's a cockchafer full of genius who is the architect of this building.' From that moment I resolved never to argue.

  • So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

  • Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.

  • The son of God is the same as the son of man; the son of man is the same as the son of God. God, the father, is the same as Christ, the son; Christ, the son, is the same as God, the father. This language may appear confused to unbelievers, but Christians will readily understand it.

  • Whenever an important event, a revolution, or a calamity turns to the profit of the church, such is always signalised as the Finger of God.

  • The Bible. That is what fools have written, what imbeciles commend, what rogues teach and young children are made to learn by heart.

  • What can I hope when all is right?

    Voltaire (2008). “The complete works of Voltaire”
  • Let us therefore reject all superstition in order to become more human; but in speaking against fanaticism, let us not imitate the fanatics: they are sick men in delirium who want to chastise their doctors. Let us assuage their ills, and never embitter them, and let us pour drop by drop into their souls the divine balm of toleration, which they would reject with horror if it were offered to them all at once.

  • Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.

  • As you know, the Inquisition is an admirable and wholly Christian invention to make the pope and the monks more powerful and turn a whole kingdom into hypocrites.

  • England has forty-two religions and only two sauces.

  • If there are atheists, who is to be blamed if not the mercenary tyrants of souls who, in revolting us against their swindles, compel some feeble spirits to deny the God whom these monsters dishonour?

  • If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

    Epitres no. 96, "A l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs" (1770) See Ovid 2
  • The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

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