Voltaire Quotes

It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.

Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches. Stones were formed to be quarried and to build castles; and My Lord has a very noble castle; the greatest Baron in the province should have the best house; and as pigs were made to be eaten, we eat pork all year round; consequently, those who have asserted all is well talk nonsense; they ought to have said that all is for the best.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly from them.

All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables that have been agreed upon

If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?

Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.

The Jews are of all peoples the grosses, the most ferocious, the most fanatical, and the most absurd.

A torch lighted in the forests of America set all Europe in conflagration.

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

The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.

Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities.

The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him

Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.

Religion may be purified. This great work was begun two hundred years ago: but men can only bear light to come in upon them by degrees.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

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.

Whosoever does not know how to recognize the faults of great men is incapable of estimating their perfections.

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

It is not a mistress I have lost but half of myself, a soul for which my soul seems to have been made.

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

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

Fools admire everything in an author of reputation.

It does not require great art, or magnificently trained eloquence, to prove that Christians should tolerate each other. I, however, am going further: I say that we should regard all men as our brothers. What? The Turk my brother? The Chinaman my brother? The Jew? The Siam? Yes, without doubt; are we not all children of the same father and creatures of the same God?

Je ne suis pas d'accord avec ce que vous dites, mais je d‚fendrai jusqu'... la mort le droit que vous avez de le dire/ I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it

History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead.

What! Have you no monks to teach, to dispute, to govern, to intrigue and to burn people who do not agree with them?

It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.

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

The way to become boring is to say everything.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

Since the whole affair had become one of religion, the vanquished were of course exterminated.

We are going to a new world... and no doubt it is there that everything is for the best; for it must be admitted that one might lament a little over the physical and moral happenings of our own world.

Froth at the top, dregs at bottom, but the middle excellent.

I keep to old books, for they teach me something; from the new I learn very little

If we do not exert the right of eating our neighbor, it is because we have other means of making good cheer

We cannot wish for that we know not.

Excellently observed", answered Candide; "but let us cultivate our garden.

Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.

Prejudice is an opinion without judgment.

The spirit of property doubles a man's strength.

If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal, nor the philosophical writings of Cicero.

The greatest consolation in life is to say what one thinks.

The pursuit of pleasure must be the goal of every rational person.

The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

If we would destroy the Christian religion, we must first of all destroy man's belief in the Bible.

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.