If you do not want to commit suicide always have something to do." -Voltaire

To rise again - to be the same person that you were - you must have your memory perfectly fresh and present; for it is memory that makes your identity. If your memory be lost, how will you be the same man? Why do mankind flatter themselves that they alone are gifted with a spiritual and immortal principle? Perhaps from their inordinate vanity. I am persuaded that if a peacock could speak he would boast of his soul, and would affirm that it inhabited his magnificent tail.

History,” [Voltaire] concludes, “is after all nothing but a pack of tricks which we play upon the dead”;40 we transform the past to suit our wishes for the future, and in the upshot “history proves that anything can be proved by history.

Christianity must be divine since it has lasted 1,700 years despite the fact that it is so full of villainy and nonsense." [Voltaire] shows how almost all ancient peoples had similar myths, and hastily concludes that the myths are thereby proved to have been the inventions of priests: "the first divine was the first rogue who met the first fool.

Perhaps, "for the common people a rewarding and avenging God" is necessary. Bayle had asked, If a society of atheists could subsist? Voltaire answers, "Yes, if they are also philosophers". But men are seldom philosophers.