Voltaire Quotes

Exaggeration, the inseparable companion of greatness.

So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbors. The citizen of the universe would be the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer.

I read these words which are the sum of all moral philosophy, and which cut short all the disputes of the casuists: When in doubt if an action is good or bad, refrain.

The superfluous is very necessary.

We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence

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

If God did not exist, he would have to be invented.

Every abuse ought to be reformed, unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself.

Liberty, then, about which so many volumes have been written is, when accurately defined, only the power of acting.

We have our arts, the ancients had theirs... We cannot raise obelisks a hundred feet high in a single piece, but our meridians are more exact.

Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.

When one man speaks to another man who doesn't understand him, and when a man who's speaking no longer understands, it's metaphysics.

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.

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.

God created woman to tame man.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him; let us worship God through Jesus if we must - if ignorance has so far prevailed that this name can still be spoken in all seriousness without being taken as a synonym for rapine and carnage. Every sensible man, every honourable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.

Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies." (Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.)

All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws

History should be written as philosophy.

Give me a few minutes to talk away my face and I can seduce the Queen of France.

To a toad what is beauty? A female with two lovely pop-eyes, a wide mouth, yellow belly, and green spotted back.

The policy of man consists, at first, in endeavoring to arrive at a state equal to that of animals, whom nature has furnished with food, clothing, and shelter.

It must be confessed that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men than the inventors of syllogisms.

Changing a habit is hard work. But it's harder to find work that would be more fulfilling

If it's too silly to be said, it can always be sung.

Meslier was the most singular phenomenon ever seen among all the meteors fatal to the Christian religion.

What is not in nature can never be true.

Needless to say since Christ's expiation not one single Christian has been known to sin, or die.

Know that the secret of the arts is to correct nature.

Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.

The more you know, the less sure you are.

the women are never at a loss, God provides for them, let us run.

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

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

A circumstance which has always appeared wonderful to me, is that such sublime discoveries should have been made by the sole assistance of a quadrant and a little arithmetic.

Love truth, and pardon error.

Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden.

All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.

Men must have somewhat altered the course of nature; for they were not born wolves, yet they have become wolves. God did not give them twenty-four-pounders or bayonets, yet they have made themselves bayonets and guns to destroy each other. In the same category I place not only bankruptcies, but the law which carries off the bankrupts’ effects, so as to defraud their creditors.

If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.

The atheists are for the most part imprudent and misguided scholars who reason badly who, not being able to understand the Creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis the eternity of things and of inevitability.

Among the illusions which have invested our civilization is an absolute belief that the solutions to our problems must be a more determined application of rationally organized expertise... The reality is that our problems are largely the product of that application.

They are mad men (Jews), but you should not burn them for that.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

Why are the Jews hated? It is the inevitable result of their laws; they either have to conquer everybody or be hated by the whole human race.

Virtuous men alone possess friends.