Voltaire Quotes

351 Sourced Quotes

To General Manstein:
The king [Frederic] has sent me some of his dirty linen to wash; I will wash yours another time.

Voltaire
We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.

Voltaire
This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

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

Voltaire
What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

Voltaire
Any one who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

Voltaire
Christ was baptized by John, but He Himself never baptized any one; now we profess ourselves disciples of Christ, and not of John.

Voltaire
If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent one.

Voltaire
Shun idleness. It is a rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.

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

Voltaire
The history of the world's great leaders is often the story of human folly.

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
It is strange that thought should depend upon the stomach, and still that men with the best stomachs are not always the best thinkers.

Voltaire
The English plays are like their English puddings: nobody has any taste for them but themselves.

Voltaire
"Well! sage Evhemere, what have you seen in all your travels?" "Follies!"

Voltaire
Work keeps us from three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty.

Voltaire
Work keeps away those three great evils: boredom, vice, and poverty.

Voltaire
Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Voltaire
In this best of all possible worlds... everything is for the best.

Voltaire
It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection.

Voltaire
Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.

Voltaire
Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

Voltaire
What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly from them.

Voltaire
Clever tyrants are never punished.

Voltaire
When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?

Voltaire
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.

Voltaire
The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.

Voltaire
I am not like a lady at the court of Versailles, who said: 'What a dreadful pity that the bother at the tower of Babel should have got language all mixed up; but for that, everyone would always have spoken French.'

Voltaire
Whoever you are, behold your master,
He is, or was, or has to be.

Voltaire
While loving glory so much how can you persist in a plan which will cause you to lose it?

Voltaire