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Quote by Voltaire

“Perhaps, if I use my reason in good faith, I may suceed in discovering some ray of probability to lighten me in the dark night of nature. And if this faint dawn which I seek does not come to me, I shall be consoled to think that my ignorance is invincible; that knowledge which is forbidden me is assuredly useless to me; and that the great Being will not punish me for having sought a knowledge of him and failed to obtain it.”

Quote by Voltaire

Book:Treatise on Toleration and Other Essays

Work

Treatise on Toleration and Other Essays

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Author

Voltaire

Voltaire, a French Enlightenment philosopher, writer, and thinker, was born on November 21, 1694, and died on May 30, 1778. He had a profound impact on philosophy, literature, and science in France and Europe with his sharp wit and critical spirit. more

“I thought that to get to know a desert it was enough to have been there. I thought that to have seen the dogs dying along the Cholula road, or to have seen the eyes of the lepers at Chiengmai gave me the right to talk about it. To have seen! To have been there! Rubbish! The world is not a book, it proves nothing. The spaces one has crossed were dark corridors with closed doors. The faces of the women to whom one gave oneself up completely: did they speak for anyone but themselves? The cities of man are secret. One walks along their streets, one sees them shine under one's feet, but one is not there, one never enters them. The dusty fields inhabited by people who are hungry, who wait patiently, are paradises of luxury and nourishment; shining at a vast distance from intelligence, at a vast distance from reason. They are not to be subjugated.”

World Book Reason Knowledge Perception

Book:The Book of Flights

Source: The Book of Flights

“Zamišljao sam svijet kao jedan veliki stroj. Strojevi ne dolaze sa suvišnim dijelovima, znaš. Uvijek dolaze s točnom količinom dijelova koji su im potrebni. Stoga pomislih, kada bi cijeli svijet bio jedan veliki stroj, ne bih mogao biti suvišan. Morao sam biti ovdje iz nekoga razloga. A to znači da iz nekoga razloga ovdje moraš biti i ti.”

Reason Future Machines Man Machinery

Author:Hugo Cabret

“Every fanatic or enemy of virtue is not at liberty to misrepresent the greatest geniuses and most heroic defenders of all that is valuable in this mortal world.”

Reason Atheism

Book:Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays

Source: Necessity of Atheism and Other Essays

“There is only one power which can from within undermine egoism at the root, and really does undermine it, namely love, and chiefly sexual love. The falsehood and evil of egoism consists in the exclusive acknowledgement of absolute significance for oneself and in the denial of it for others. Reason shows us that this is unfounded and unjust, but simply by the facts love directly abrogates such an unjust relation, compelling us not by abstract consciousness, but by an internal emotion and the will of life to recognize for ourselves the absolute significance of another. Recognizing in love the truth of another, not abstractly, but essentially, transferring in deed the centre of our life beyond the limits of our empirical personality, we by so doing reveal and realize our own real truth, our own absolute significance, which consists just in our capacity to transcend the borders of our factual phenomenal being, in our capacity to live not only in ourselves, but also in another.”