Voltaire

Quotes

Regimen is superior to medicine.
This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.
If we can't find something pleasant, we will at least find something new.
It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.
I have lost the half of myself – a soul for which mine was made.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.
Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
When its a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
All is for the best in the best of all possible ways.
We're neither pure; nor wise; nor good; we do the best we know.
Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.
Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one part of the citizens to give to the other.
God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.
God is always on the side of the big battalions.
[Optimism is] the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.
There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts.
God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.
History is a pack of lies we play on the dead.
Indolence is sweet, and its consequences bitter.
Each player must accept the cards life deals him.
But once they are in hand, he alone must decide
how to play the cards in order to win the game.
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.
Anything too stupid to be said is sung.
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.
When we hear news we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.
The secret of being boring is to say everything.
Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.
Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.
...the safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.
Love truth, and pardon error.
Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.
The public is a ferocious beast -- one must either chain it up or flee from it.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.
Common sense is not so common.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is an absurd one.
It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.
We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.
Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.
The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.
I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men that the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship towers considerably above him who imagined innate ideas.
Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.
Life resembles the banquet of Damocles; the sword is ever suspended.
He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.
"Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge
The superfluous is very necessary.
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 color.
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid; you must also be well-mannered.
If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.
England has forty-two religions and only two sauces.
Canada: A few acres of snow.
I was never ruined but twice: once when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I won one.
Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.
When it is a question of money, everyone is of the same religion.
The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman nor an Empire.
A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without working at the expense of the rascals who work to live.
Once the people begin to reason, all is lost.
The art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of the citizens to give to the other.
This poem will never reach its destination.
May God defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.
Since the whole affair had become one of religion, the vanquished were of course exterminated.
Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less in human beings of whom they know nothing.
This is no time to make new enemies.
God created sex. Priests created marriage.
There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics... We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer.
The multitude of books is making us ignorant.
As long as there are fools and rascals, there will be religions.
Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies.
Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Judge of a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
Prejudice is opinion without judgement.
All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.
You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.
There is a wide difference between speaking to deceive, and being silent to be impenetrable.
True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten oneself and others.
Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
A witty saying proves nothing.
To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him.
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.