Wealth & Money Quote by Voltaire

Voltaire’s line is a tiny demolition charge aimed at Europe’s public pieties. “Religion” here isn’t theology; it’s branding. In the 18th century, confessional identity was supposed to be destiny: Catholic, Protestant, Jew - categories policed by law, custom, and sometimes violence. Voltaire’s trick is to grant religion its full social gravity, then show how quickly it evaporates when money walks into the room. The punch isn’t that people like wealth; it’s that the very institutions claiming moral supremacy tend to discover a sudden, flexible ecumenism at the cashbox.

The intent is classic Voltaire: expose hypocrisy without sermonizing. By framing greed as a “same religion,” he turns a vice into a creed, suggesting capitalism’s earliest cultural victory - not just as an economic system but as a unifying faith stronger than doctrine. The subtext is cynical and precise: sectarian conflict is often less about God than about power, and power keeps a ledger. When profits are on the line, yesterday’s heretic becomes today’s business partner, and the “incompatible” beliefs become negotiable details.

Context sharpens the barb. Voltaire lived in the shadow of the Wars of Religion and their aftermath, in a France still scarred by intolerance (the Calas affair would later become his cause celebre). He watched monarchs and churches defend orthodoxy while merchants, financiers, and courts made pragmatic deals across those same lines. The wit works because it names a modern pattern: moral absolutism in public, transactional realism in private - and it dares the reader to notice who benefits from the difference.