Voltaire - Virtue Quotes

13 Sourced Quotes

View all Voltaire Quotes
The institution of religion exists only to keep mankind in order, and to make men merit the goodness of God by their virtue. Everything in a religion which does not tend towards this goal must be considered foreign or dangerous.

Voltaire
Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active force. Under coercion there is no virtue, and without virtue there is no religion. Make a slave of me, and I shall be no better for it. Even the sovereign has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, which by its nature supposes choice and liberty. My thought is no more subject to authority than is sickness or health.

Voltaire
Virtue debases itself in justifying itself.

Voltaire
It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their colour.

Voltaire
Virtue: a word easy to pronounce, difficult to understand.

Voltaire
All mortals are equal; it is not their birth,
But virtue itself that makes the difference.

Voltaire
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

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

Voltaire
Virtue between men is a commerce of good actions: he who has no part in this commerce must not be reckoned.

Voltaire
A lady of honor may be raped once, but it strengthens her virtue.

Voltaire
I have seen men incapable of the sciences, but never any incapable of virtue.

Voltaire
Hope should no more be a virtue than fear; we fear and we hope, according to what is promised or threatened us.

Voltaire
History in general is a collection of crimes, follies, and misfortunes among which we have now and then met with a few virtues, and some happy times.

Voltaire