Voltaire, in his Letter to Prince Frederick William of Prussia (28 November 1770)
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Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one. What is most repellent in the System of Nature — after the recipe for making eels from flour — is the audacity with which it decides that there is no God, without even having tried to prove the impossibility. If God did not exist, he would have to be invented. But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.

— Voltaire

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one. What is most repellent in the System of Nature — after the recipe for making eels from flour — is the audacity with which it decides that there is no God, without even having tried to prove the impossibility. If God did not exist, he would have to be invented. But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it." in the context of "Voltaire, in his Letter to Prince Frederick William of Prussia (28 November 1770)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Baron d'Holbach" (Quotes about d'Holbach) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Baron d

About Baron d'Holbach

Baron d'Holbach, Paul-Henri Thiry (8 December 1723 – 21 January 1789) was a French author, philosopher and encyclopedist. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, Germany. He is most famous as being one of the first self-described atheists in Europe.