Voltaire Quotes

351 Sourced Quotes

Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.

Voltaire
One always speaks badly when one has nothing to say.

Voltaire
All men are by nature free; you have therefore an undoubted liberty to depart whenever you please, but will have many and great difficulties to encounter in passing the frontiers.

Voltaire
Self-love is a balloon filled with wind, from which tempests emerge when pricked.

Voltaire
The interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists.

Voltaire
Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.

Voltaire
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

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

Voltaire
We can not always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.

Voltaire
I cannot guess what may be the fate of Quakerism in America; but I perceive it loses ground daily in England. In all countries, where the established religion is of a mild and tolerating nature, it will at length swallow up all the rest.

Voltaire
A people that sells its own children is more condemnable than the buyer; this commerce demonstrates our superiority; he who gives himself a master was born to have one.

Voltaire
Weakness on both sides is, as we know, the motto of all quarrels.

Voltaire
Would you console yourself when you die for parting from those with whom you liked to live? Think that they will be soon consoled for your death.

Voltaire
If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other's throats; but if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace

Voltaire
Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts florish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any experienced in a town when it is under siege.

Voltaire
People sometimes say: "Common sense is quite rare."

Voltaire
The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

Voltaire
It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.

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

Voltaire
I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley — in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered — or simply to sit here and do nothing?' That is a hard question,' said Candide.

Voltaire
One feels like crawling on all fours after reading your work.

Voltaire
Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.

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
A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity

Voltaire
The public is a ferocious beast: one must chain it up or flee from it.

Voltaire
In every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.

Voltaire
He was my equal in beauty, a paragon of grace and charm, sparkling with wit, and burning with love. I adored him to distraction, to the point of idolatry: I loved him as one can never love twice.

Voltaire
Thought depends largely on the stomach. In spite of this, those with the best stomachs are not always the best thinkers.

Voltaire
Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.

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

Voltaire