Voltaire Quotes

351 Sourced Quotes

This is the happiest of all men, for he is superior to everything he possesses.

Voltaire
It is sad that often, to be a good patriot, one must be the enemy of the rest of mankind.

Voltaire
[Men] use thought only to justify their injustices, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Voltaire
In a word, we only pray to God because we have made him in our image. We treat him like a pasha, like a sultan whom one may provoke or appease.

Voltaire
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.

Voltaire
Error flies from mouth to mouth, from pen to pen, and to destroy it takes ages.

Voltaire
The post is the grand connecting link of all transactions. Those who are absent, by its means become present; it is the consolation of life.

Voltaire
Nothing is so common as to imitate one's enemies, and to use their weapons.

Voltaire
Chance is a world void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.

Voltaire
We should be considerate to the living; to the dead we owe only the truth.

Voltaire
But for what purpose was the earth formed?" asked Candide. "To drive us mad," replied Martin.

Voltaire
There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

Voltaire
Love is a canvas furnished by Nature, and embroidered by imagination.

Voltaire
What a fuss about an omelette!
When he heard of the burning of De l'esprit

Voltaire
If one must serve, I hold it better to serve a well-bred lion, who is naturally stronger than I am, than two hundred rats of my own breed.

Voltaire
Philosophers and men of letters have done more for mankind than Orpheus, Hercules, or Theseus; for it is more meritorious and more difficult to wean men from their prejudices than to civilize the barbarian: It is harder to correct than to instruct.

Voltaire
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.

Voltaire
It would be very singular that all nature, all the planets, should obey eternal laws, and that there should be a little animal five feet high, who, in contempt of these laws, could act as he pleased, solely according to his caprice.

Voltaire
How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! How horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant hypocrite.

Voltaire
Use, do not abuse; as the wise man commands. I flee Epictetus and Petronius alike. Neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

Voltaire
We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe only truth.

Voltaire
A company of solemn tyrants is impervious to all seductions.

Voltaire
The necessity of saying something, the embarrassment produced by the consciousness of having nothing to say, and the desire to exhibit ability, are three things sufficient to render even a great man ridiculous.

Voltaire
Fanaticism is to superstition what delirium is to fever, and fury to anger.

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

Voltaire