“Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.”
More from Voltaire on Philosophy
“Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.”
“Men employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.”
“Injustice in the end produces independence.”
“The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reasoning.”
“I assert nothing, I content myself with believing that more is possible than people think.”
“If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?”
“What a pessimist you are!" exclaimed Candide."That is because I know what life is," said Martin.”
“What's optimism? said Cacambo. Alas, said Candide, it is a mania for saying things are well when one is in hell.”
“What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.”
“Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. (The perfect is the enemy of the good.)”
Others on Philosophy
Ludwig Wittgenstein
22 quotes“The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.”
Christopher Hitchens
22 quotes“How much vanity must be concealed – not too effectively at that – in order to pretend that one is the personal object of...”
Nietzsche
22 quotes“One does not hate as long as one has a low esteem of someone, but only when one esteems him as an equal or a superior.”
Carl Jung
21 quotes“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
Immanuel Kant
20 quotes“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”
Heraclitus
19 quotes“All things flow nothing abides.”
H. L. Mencken
17 quotes“We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.”
C.S. Lewis
15 quotes“[Consciousness] is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
14 quotes“Consciousness is man's greatest misfortune, still I know that man loves it and will not exchange it for any satisfaction...”
Samuel Beckett
14 quotes“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.”
Napoleon
14 quotes“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”
Isaac Asimov
13 quotes“Society is much more easily soothed than one's own conscience.”