Voltaire Quotes

There can be no happiness without good health

It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.

I never approved either the errors of his book, or the trivial truths he so vigorously laid down. I have, however, stoutly taken his side when absurd men have condemned him for these same truths.

The malevolence of men revealed itself to his mind in all of its ugliness

I have chosen to be happy because it is goo for my health.

Providence has given us hope and sleep as a compensation for the many cares of life.

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

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

All styles are good except the tiresome kind.

All succeeds with people who are sweet and cheerful.

Men appear to prefer ruining one another's fortunes, and cutting each other's throats about a few paltry villages, to extending the grand means of human happiness.

You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

What can we say with certainty?

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.

Let us meet four times a year in a grand temple with music, and thank God for all his gifts. There is one sun. There is one God. Let us have one religion. Then all mankind will be brethren.

It is the triumph of superior reason to live with folks who don't have any.

If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones.

I know of no great men except those who have rendered great service to the human race.

It would be easier to subjugate the entire universe through force than the minds of a single village.

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

Once the people begin to reason, all is lost

Our priests are not what a silly populace supposes; all their learning consists in our credulity.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

The prudent man does himself good; the virtuous one does it to other men.

My life's dream has been a perpetual nightmare.

The worthy administrators of justice are like a cat set to take care of a cheese, lest it should be gnawed by the mice. One bite of the cat does more damage to the cheese than twenty mice can do.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.

Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.

He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.

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

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

Common sense is not so common.

Historians are gossips who tease the dead

The best way to be boring is to include everything.

Democracy is just a filler for textbooks! Do you actually believe that public opinion influences the government?

The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.

It is with books as with the fires of our grates, everybody borrows a light from his neighbor to kindle his own, which in turn is communicated to others, and each partakes of all.

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.

Prejudices are what rule the vulgar crowd.

He who seeks truth should be of no country.

The best is the enemy of the good.

Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

Fear could never make virtue.

Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because there is nothing to be gained by him.

Answer me, you who believe that animals are only machines. Has nature arranged for this animal to have all the machinery of feelings only in order for it not to have any at all?

We admit, in geometry, not only infinite magnitudes, that is to say, magnitudes greater than any assignable magnitude, but infinite magnitudes infinitely greater, the one than the other. This astonishes our dimension of brains, which is only about six inches long, five broad, and six in depth, in the largest heads.