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A caliph once, when his last hour had come,
This prayer addressed to him he reverenced:
"To thee, sole and all-powerful king, I bear
What thou dost lack in thy immensity—
Evil and ignorance, distress and sin."
He might have added one thing further—hope.

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Philosophy

More quotes by Voltaire

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

It is very strange that men should deny a creator and yet attribute to themselves the power of creating eels.

Dictionnaire philosophique portatif (1764)

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

We have never intended to enlighten shoemakers and servants—this is up to apostles.

Whoe'er thou art, thy master see;
He was—or is—or is to be.

All Voltaire quotes →

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.

Martin Buber Power and Love (1926)

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

John C. Lilly The Human Biocomputer (1974)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Voltaire (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.