Voltaire Quotes

351 Sourced Quotes

God prefers bad verses recited with a pure heart to the finest verses chanted by the wicked.

Voltaire
All religions are more or less mixed with superstitions. Man is not reasonable enough to content himself with a pure and sensible religion, worthy of the Deity.

Voltaire
"Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst!

Voltaire
In this country [England] it is useful from time to time to kill one admiral in order to encourage the others.

Voltaire
I always made one prayer to God, a very short one. Here it is: "O Lord, make our enemies quite ridiculous!" God granted it.

Voltaire
Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.

Voltaire
It does not depend upon us to avoid poverty, but it does depend upon us to make that poverty respected.

Voltaire
Ancient histories, as one of our wits has said, are but fables that have been agreed upon.

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

Voltaire
We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.

Voltaire
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.

Voltaire
The Devil should not try his tricks on a clever physician. Those familiar with nature are dangerous for the wonderworkers. I advise the Devil always to apply to the faculty of theology — not to the medical faculty.

Voltaire
Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.

Voltaire
I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

Voltaire
With the world, do not resort to injuries, but only to irony and gayety: injury revolts, while irony makes one reflect, and gayety disarms.

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

Voltaire
If there are atheists, who is to be blamed if not the mercenary tyrants of souls who, in revolting us against their swindles, compel some feeble spirits to deny the God whom these monsters dishonour?

Voltaire
Pleasantry is never good on serious points, because it always regards subjects in that point of view in which it is not the purpose to consider them.

Voltaire
But nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of the human body, the diseases which assail it, the remedies which will benefit it, exercises his art with caution, and pays equal attention to the rich and the poor.

Voltaire
In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

Voltaire