Voltaire Quotes

#1. The supposed right of intolerance is absurd and barbaric. It is the right of the tiger; nay, it is far worse, for tigers do but tear in order to have food, while we rend each other for paragraphs.

Voltaire

#2. The opinion of all lawyers, the unanimous cry of the nation, and the good of the state, are in themselves a law.

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#3. The way to become boring is to say everything.

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#4. A true god surely cannot have been born of a girl, nor died on the gibbet, nor be eaten in a piece of dough ... [or inspired] books, filled with contradictions, madness, and horror.

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#5. To caress the serpent that devours us, until it has eaten away our heart.

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#6. The tyranny of the many would be when one body takes over the rights of others, and then exercises its power to change the laws in its favor.

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#7. To make a vow for life is to make oneself a slave.

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#8. For can anything be sillier than to insist on carrying a burden one would continually much rather throw to the ground?

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#9. It must also be noted that until the present time this malady, like religious controversy, has been wholly confined to the continent of Europe.

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#10. Alas ... I too have known love, that ruler of hearts, that soul of our soul: it's never brought me anything except one kiss and twenty kicks in the rump. How could such a beautiful cause produce such an abominable effect on you?

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#11. Pangloss most cruelly deceived me when he said that everything in the world is for the best.

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#12. Let us leave every man at liberty to seek into him and to lose himself in his ideas.

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#13. Nothing is more annoying than to be obscurely hanged.

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#14. I've had some experience of this love, this love that rules our hearts, which is the soul of our souls; all it got me was a kiss and twenty kicks in the ass. How could so beautiful a cause have produced in you such an abominable effect?

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#15. As you know, the Inquisition is an admirable and wholly Christian invention to make the pope and the monks more powerful and turn a whole kingdom into hypocrites.

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#16. The Bible. That is what fools have written, what imbeciles commend, what rogues teach and young children are made to learn by heart.

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#17. To really enjoy pleasures, you must know how to leave them.

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#18. Fools admire everything in an author of reputation.

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#19. Mortals are equal; their mask differs.

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#20. Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities.

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#21. That is why all romantics are anti-Voltairean, even Michelet, whose political fervor ought to have made him stand aligned with Voltaire; and that is why, on the other hand, all the minds which accept the world and recognize its irony and indifference are Voltairean.

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#22. Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.

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#23. Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.

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#24. Let us cultivate our garden.

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#25. A physician is an unfortunate gentleman who is every day required to perform a miracle; namely to reconcile health with intemperance.

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#26. All comes out even at the end of the day, and all comes out still more even when all the days are over.

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#27. Villains are undone by what is worst in them, heroes by what is best.

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#28. We adore each other, and yet are afraid to love; we are consumed with a passion which we both condemn. Zadig

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#29. The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him.

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#30. When man was put into the garden of eden, he was put there with the idea that he should work the land; and this proves that man was not born to be idle.

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#31. Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.

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#32. Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

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#33. God created woman to tame man.

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#34. Adultery is an evil only inasmuch as it is a theft; but we do not steal that which is given to us.

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#35. England has forty-two religions and only two sauces.

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#36. In all the disputes which have excited Christians against each other, Rome has invariably decided in favor of that opinion which tended most towards the suppression of the human intellect and the annihilation of the reasoning powers.

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#37. A fool is a person who guesses and gets it wrong, a clever man is one who guesses, regardless of time period, and gets it right.

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#38. Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.

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#39. Truth is a fruit that can only be picked when it is very ripe.

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#40. He was my equal in beauty, a paragon of grace and charm, sparkling with wit, and burning with love. I adored him to distraction, to the point of idolatry: I loved him as one can never love twice.

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#41. I envy animals for two things - their ignorance of evil to come, and their ignorance of what is said about them.

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#42. One always begins with the simple, then comes the complex, and by superior enlightenment one often reverts in the end to the simple. Such is the course of human intelligence.

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#43. Errors flies from mouth to mouth, from pen to pen, and to destroy it takes ages.

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#44. I suspected as much.

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#45. Opinion is called the queen of the world; it is so, for when reason opposes it, it is condemned to death. It must rise twenty times from its ashes to gradually drive away the usurper.

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#46. Never having been able to succeed in the world, he took his revenge by speaking ill of it.

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#47. We know that all the arts are brothers, that each of them illuminates another, and that a universal light results.

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#48. I only know in general that the people we are going to see are very atrabilious.

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#49. Where some states have an army, the Prussian Army has a state.

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#50. we often meet with those whom we expected never to see more;

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#51. I was never ruined but twice: once when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I won one.

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#52. The only reward to be expected from literature is contempt if one fails and hatred if one succeeds.

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#53. The more you know, the less sure you are.

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#54. No one is ignorant that our character and turn of mind are intimately connected with the water-closet.

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#55. All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they may be equally free

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#56. If mankind were born tomorrow it would divide into groups; each would scramble to invent their one and only god, and set about butchering each-other.

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#57. There is the history of opinions which is hardly anything but a collection of human errors.

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#58. The Deluge: A punishment inflicted on the human race by an all-knowing God, who, through not having foreseen the wickedness of men, repented of having made them, and drowned them once for all to make them better - an act which, as we all know, was accompanied by the greatest success.

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#59. Everything is not as good as in El-Dorado; but everything is not so bad.

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#60. The first clergyman was the first rascal who met the first fool.

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#61. When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.

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#62. No, nothing has the power to part me from you; our love is based upon virtue, and will last as long as our lives.

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#63. It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.

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#64. Nature has always had more force than education.

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#65. Oh! what a superior man," said Candide below his breath. "What a great genius is this Pococurante! Nothing can please him.

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#66. All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

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#67. The punishment of criminals should be of use; when a man is hanged he is good for nothing.

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#68. When a man is in love, jealous, and just whipped by the Inquisition, he is no longer himself.

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#69. Love truth, but pardon error.

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#70. Weakness on both sides is, as we know, the motto of all quarrels.

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#71. The adjective is the enemy of the noun. Variant: The adjective is the enemy of the substantive.

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#72. Wherever my travels may lead, paradise is where I am.

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#73. The biggest reward for a thing well done is to have done it.

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#74. Theological religion is the source of all imaginable follies and disturbances. It is the parent of fanaticism and civil discord; it is the enemy of mankind.

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#75. Not all citizens can be equally strong; but they can all be equally free.

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#76. In France every man is either an anvil or a hammer; he is a beater or must be beaten.

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#77. The question of good and evil remains in irremediable chaos for those who seek to fathom it in reality. It is mere mental sport to the disputants, who are captives that play with their chains.

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#78. Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities.

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#79. Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.

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#80. Work is often the father of pleasure.

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#81. The Flames? Already?

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#82. Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls.

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#83. Of all religions, Christianity is without a doubt the one that should inspire tolerance most

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#84. History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.

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#85. But there must be some pleasure in condemning everything
in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties.'
'You mean there is pleasure in having no pleasure.

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#86. Injustice in the end produces independence.

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#87. The right of commanding is no longer an advantage transmitted by nature; like an inheritance, it is the fruit of labors, the price of courage.

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#88. Why, since we are always complaining of our ills, are we constantly employed in redoubling them?

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#89. Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

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#90. A good action is preferable to an argument.

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#91. No opinion is worth burning your neighbor for.

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#92. Religion, far from being beneficial food, turns to poison in infected brains.

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#93. It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.

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#94. Martin concluded that man was born to live in either the convulsions of distress or the lethargy of boredom.

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#95. Wisdom must yield to superstition's rules,
Who arms with bigot zeal the hand of fools.

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#96. The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.

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#97. Fear could never make virtue.

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#98. Originality is nothing by judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

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#99. What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

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#100. Where there is friendship, there is our natural soil.

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