Voltaire Quotes

351 Sourced Quotes

Why do we dream in our sleep if we have no soul? and, if we have one, how is it that dreams are so incoherent and extravagant?

Voltaire
The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.

Voltaire
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy, the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

Voltaire
It is with books as with the fire in our hearths; we go to a neighbor to get the embers and light it when we return home, pass it on to others, and it belongs to everyone

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
All philosophical sects have run aground on the reef of moral and physical ill. It only remains for us to confess that God, having acted for the best, had not been able to do better.

Voltaire
Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.

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

Voltaire
Love has features which pierce all hearts, he wears a bandage which conceals the faults of those beloved. He has wings, he comes quickly and flies away the same.

Voltaire
To caress the serpent that devours us, until it has eaten away our heart.

Voltaire
In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

Voltaire
I swear that, not being able to be yours, I will belong to no one.

Voltaire
Man is free at the instant he wants to be.

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

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

Voltaire
It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

Voltaire
Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.

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

Voltaire
When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.

Voltaire
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

Voltaire
Define your terms, you will permit me again to say, or we shall never understand one another.

Voltaire
Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.

Voltaire
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one. What is most repellent in the System of Nature [of d'Holbach] — after the recipe for making eels from flour — is the audacity with which it decides that there is no God, without even having tried to prove the impossibility.

Voltaire
It is with books as with men; a very small number play a great part; the rest are lost in the multitude.

Voltaire
A republic is not founded on virtue, but on the ambition of its citizens.

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

Voltaire
Prejudice is an opinion without judgement.

Voltaire
Work is often the father of pleasure; I pity the man overwhelmed with the weight of his own leisure.

Voltaire
Love is of all the passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the body.

Voltaire
I read only to please myself, and enjoy only what suits my taste.

Voltaire