| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
03 Mar 2006 11:58:50 PM |
| Object: |
Voltaire Quote -- help!! :P |
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit
atrocities"
-Voltaire
I see this all over the net and I can't seem to find the source of it.
I have found Voltaire texts...in French. That doesn't help me LOL
Do any of your smart and well-read people know the source of this
quote?
Thank you so much!
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| User: "David Canzi -- non-mailable" |
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| Title: Re: Voltaire Quote -- help!! :P |
05 Mar 2006 01:14:52 PM |
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In article <1141451930.099284.313650@t39g2000cwt.googlegroups.com>,
<ff100100@hotmail.com> wrote:
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit
atrocities"
-Voltaire
I see this all over the net and I can't seem to find the source of it.
I have found Voltaire texts...in French. That doesn't help me LOL
Do any of your smart and well-read people know the source of this
quote?
Thank you so much!
I went on the same quest a year or two ago. What I found was
many thousands of hits (far more than it was practical to visit),
no source provided for the quote at any of the pages I did visit,
and more versions of the quote with more variation than could be
accounted for merely by differences in translation. Some people
are typing it in very inaccurately from memory, or perhaps even
deliberately "improving" it.
Most people don't verify the information they put on their web
pages. They just copy what they see and like from other web pages.
Most people on the web are repeating each other's mistakes.
What we find when we search for something on the web is often
just the most popular mistake.
The version of the Voltaire quote you give above is the one most
commonly found on the web, and the one I like the best, neither
of which is any reason to place any faith in its accuracy.
--
David Canzi "Imminent death of dominant paradigm predicted -- film at 11."
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| User: "David Canzi -- non-mailable" |
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| Title: Re: Voltaire Quote -- help!! :P |
07 Mar 2006 11:03:23 PM |
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In article <1141451930.099284.313650@t39g2000cwt.googlegroups.com>,
<ff100100@hotmail.com> wrote:
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit
atrocities"
-Voltaire
I see this all over the net and I can't seem to find the source of it.
I have found Voltaire texts...in French. That doesn't help me LOL
Do any of your smart and well-read people know the source of this
quote?
Thank you so much!
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire
* Source: Questions sur les miracles (1765)
Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that
are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have
commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is unjust
because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly,
whoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust. 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.
* Original: Il y a eu des gens qui ont dit autrefois: Vous croyez
des choses incompréhensibles, contradictoires, impossibles, parce
que nous vous lavons ordonné; faites donc des choses injustes
parce que nous vous lordonnons. Ces gens-là raisonnaient à
merveille. Certainement qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde
est en droit de vous rendre injuste. Si vous nopposez point aux
ordres de croire limpossible lintelligence que Dieu a mise dans
votre esprit, vous ne devez point opposer aux ordres de malfaire
la justice que Dieu a mise dans votre coeur. Une faculté de votre
âme étant une fois tyrannisée, toutes les autres facultés doivent
lêtre également. Et cest là ce qui a produit tous les crimes
religieux dont la terre a été inondée.
(I intended to search for "believe absurdities" and the name of
one of Voltaire's works, and if that didn't work I would then
search for "believe absurdities" and some other Voltaire works,
and so on. It turns out that if you search for a quote fragment
and the name of one of the author's works you find pages created
by people who provide sources, or try to. You don't have to
guess right. I was trying "Sept Discours" when I found this.)
--
David Canzi "Imminent death of dominant paradigm predicted -- film at 11."
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