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If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.

Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer.

Original text (French)

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Notes from Wikiquote

cf. Cicero, Dii immortales ad usum hominum fabricati pene videantur.

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God

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.

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Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.

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When the mind is not dissipated upon extraneous things, nor diffused over the world about us through the senses, it withdraws within itself, and of its own accord ascends to the contemplation of God.

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Once you accept the existence of God — however you define him, however you explain your relationship to him — then you are caught forever with his presence in the center of all things.

Morris West The Clowns of God (1981)

God seeks comrades and claims love,
the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.

Rabindranath Tagore Fireflies (1928)

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.