Quotations:
“Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. If the God‐given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God‐given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world.” — Voltaire
This is an English translation from “Questions sur les miracles,” which Voltaire published 1765.
There is a more popular, internet-icized version of this quote, that goes like “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
Whatever the form, the message is clear and as important today as it was when he wrote it during the period just before the start of the French Revolution.
