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Candide Quote by Voltaire

“What a pessimist you are!" exclaimed Candide. "That is because…” quote by Voltaire — Download Open image

“What a pessimist you are!" exclaimed Candide. "That is because I know what life is," said Martin.”

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Candide Life Life is Pessimism Pessimist Said

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In every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.

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Fanaticism, to which men are so much inclined, has always served not only to render them more brutalized but more wicked.

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History is the study of the world's crime

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We’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good; we do the best we know.

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It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part, the rest are lost in the multitude.

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Meslier was the most singular phenomenon ever seen among all the meteors fatal to the Christian religion.

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Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror." "Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion…

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Being unable to make people more reasonable, I preferred to be happy away from them

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When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?

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Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively.

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God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

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It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.

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More Candide quotes

Rereading Candide, I was struck by the link between optimism and the optimal, the idea that we have been placed in this optimal world…

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“The shrieks were coming from two quite naked girls, who were pursued by a pair of apes snapping at their bottoms. [...] So he…

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Optimism and happiness are not the same thing, but they are becoming interchangeable, and it seemed to me that Voltaire's Candide gave me a…

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All men are by nature free; you have therefore an undoubted liberty to depart whenever you please, but will have many and great difficulties…

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“Everything is not as good as in El-Dorado; but everything is not so bad.”

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Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.

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Dogs, monkeys, and parrots are a thousand times less miserable than we are.

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You're a bitter man," said Candide. That's because I've lived," said Martin.

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“It is man´s faith to live either on agonies of fear and turmoil or in the prostration of boredom.”

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Hyper-selectionism has been with us for a long time in various guises; for it represents the late nineteenth century's scientific version of the myth…

Stephen Jay Gould

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I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run…

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What! Have you no monks to teach, to dispute, to govern, to intrigue and to burn people who do not agree with them?

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Browse all 32 Candide quotes