#voltaire

I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley -- in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered -- or simply to sit here and do nothing?' That is a hard question,' said Candide. ↗

— Voltaire

#voltaire #misery

It is love; love, the comfort of the human species, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sentient beings, love, tender love. ↗

— Voltaire

#love #pangloss #voltaire #love

One does not arrest Voltaire. ↗

— Charles de Gaulle

#does #voltaire

If I were king, I would redress an abuse which cuts back, as it were, one half of human kind. I would have women participate in all human rights, especially those of the mind. ↗

— Émilie Du Châtelet

#engineering #math #passonate-minds #rights #science