Voltaire Quotes

The slayers of the heretics are the worst heretics of all.

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

A religion that requires persecution to sustain it is of the devil’s propagation.

It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.

The story of the decadence of the cathedral as a moral power, a spiritual energizer in civilization, is the sad but inevitable story of dogmatism. It is the story of the struggle of free thought with bigotry, religion making common cause with the wrong side.

In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

Bigotry murders religion to frighten fools with her ghost.

Any body of men who believe in hell will persecute whenever they have the power.

All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. And that's where it turns demonic. Because that's when you get religious wars and persecutions and burning heretics at the stake.

Over the course of history many religions have fallen victim to violent interpretations.

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and overzealous piety.

The only time I every fear religion is when it has the power of the state behind it.

If my son were to oppose the Catholic Church, I myself would carry the faggots to burn him.

No orthodox church ever had power that it did not endeavor to make people think its way by force and flame.

The opposite of faith is not doubt: It is certainty. It is madness. You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do.

Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.

Religion doesn't make people bigots. People are bigots and they use religion to justify their ideology.

What faith has not been used by demagogues as a club over somebody's head?

Sectarianism, bigotry, and it's horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful Earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization, and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now.

A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it

We have to struggle with pedantry, with intolerance, with divines and statesmen, and above all, princes and priests are in our way.

Christianity is the enemy of liberty and of civilization. It has kept mankind in chains.

To what great evils has religion been able to impel men.