Voltaire Quotes on Mind
Francois-Marie Arouet, known by his pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit and his advocacy of civil liberties. This page collects quotes attributed to Voltaire on the topic of mind, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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Attributed to Voltaire:
“Common sense is not so common.”
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Attributed to Voltaire:
“Prejudices are what fools use for reason.”
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“It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.”
1750s | Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750) Note: This quotation and the three that follow directly below are from the so-called Leningrad Notebook, also known as Le Sottisier; it is one of several posthumously publish -
“Life is long enough for him who knows how to use it. Working and thinking extend its limits.”
A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness(1902) | p. 219 -
“Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.”
1760s | Letter to Louise Dorothea of Meiningen , duchess of Saxe-Gotha Madame (30 January 1762) -
“Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.”
1760s | Dialogue 14 , Le Chapon et la Poularde (1766); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations , 10th ed. (1919)