Voltaire quotes
1694-1778 French Historian WriterThe only way to compel men to speak good of us is to do it.
Voltaire
Character
Common sense is not so common.
Voltaire
Common Sense
Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.
Voltaire
Fate
Shun idleness is the rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.
Voltaire
Idleness
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.
Voltaire
Doctors
Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create.
Voltaire
Doctors
I know of nothing more laughable than a doctor who does not die of old age.
Voltaire
Doctors
The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.
Voltaire
Creation
He who dies before many witnesses always does so with courage.
Voltaire
Courage
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
Voltaire
Courtesy
The Pope is an idol whose hands are tied and whose feet are kissed.
Voltaire
Churches
All kinds are good except the kind that bores you.
Voltaire
Bores and Boredom
All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.
Voltaire
Books - Reading
It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.
Voltaire
Books - Reading
One of the chief misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowardly.
Voltaire
Coward and Cowardice
Doubt is not a pleasant mental state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.
Voltaire
Certainty
You must have the devil in you to succeed in the arts.
Voltaire
Devil
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
Conformity
In my life, I have prayed but one prayer: oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.
Voltaire
Enemies
Exaggeration is the inseparable companion of greatness.
Voltaire
Exaggeration
God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.
Voltaire
God
It is fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions.
Voltaire
Fashion
As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.
Voltaire
Evil
Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.
Voltaire
Greed
All people are equal, it is not birth, it is virtue alone that makes the difference.
Voltaire
Equality
What a heavy burden is a name that has become famous too soon.
Voltaire
Fame
It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.
Voltaire
Freedom
The best is the enemy of the good.
Voltaire
Excellence
May God defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.
Voltaire
Friends and Friendship
Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.
Voltaire
Government
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Voltaire
Government
The great consolation in life is to say what one thinks.
Voltaire
Frankness
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Voltaire
Freedom of Speech
Liberty, then, about which so many volumes have been written is, when accurately defined, only the power of acting.
Voltaire
Freedom
God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions.
Voltaire
God
The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force.
Voltaire
Freedom
God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.
Voltaire
God
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.
Voltaire
God
History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead.
Voltaire
History and Historians
History is just the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes.
Voltaire
History and Historians
The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
Voltaire
Government
Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.
Voltaire
Love
The pursuit of what is true and the practice of what is good are the two most important objects of philosophy.
Voltaire
Philosophers and Philosophy
When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy.
Voltaire
Philosophers and Philosophy
We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.
Voltaire
Manners
No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
Voltaire
Problems
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.
Voltaire
Imagination
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
Voltaire
Marriage
We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.
Voltaire
Life and Living
My life is a battle.
Voltaire
Life and Living
I was never ruined but twice; once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I won one.
Voltaire
Law and Lawyers
The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
Voltaire
Medicine
I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.
Voltaire
Lies and Lying
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy; the mad daughter of a wise mother.
Voltaire
Superstition
I know of no great man except those who have rendered great services to the human race.
Voltaire
Service
The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.
Voltaire
Surprises
Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is.
Voltaire
Metaphysics
When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
Voltaire
Money
When he to whom a person speaks does not understand, and he who speaks does not understand himself, that is metaphysics.
Voltaire
Metaphysics
Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.
Voltaire
Superstition
Originality is nothing but judicious plagiarism.
Voltaire
Originality
Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
Voltaire
Prejudice
If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two, they would cut each other s throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness.
Voltaire
Multiculturalism
The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.
Voltaire
Pride
It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.
Voltaire
Poetry and Poets
My prayer to God is a very short one: O Lord, make my enemies look ridiculous! God has granted it.
Voltaire
Prayer
Perfection is attained by slow degrees; she requires the hand of time.
Voltaire
Patience
Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.
Voltaire
Poetry and Poets
In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.
Voltaire
News
This poem will never reach its destination. [On Rousseau s Ode To Posterity]
Voltaire
Poetry and Poets
How I like the boldness of the English, how I like the people who say what they think!
Voltaire
Nationalities and Nationalism
The discover of what is true, and the practice of that which is good, are the two most important objects of philosophy.
Voltaire
Practice
The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.
Voltaire
Opinions
Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.
Voltaire
Passion
The public is a ferocious beast. One must either chain it up or flee from it.
Voltaire
People
It is only through timidity that states are lost.
Voltaire
Timidity
The superfluous is very necessary.
Voltaire
Necessity
Pleasure is the object, duty and the goal of all rational creatures.
Voltaire
Pleasure
Work is often the father of pleasure.
Voltaire
Pleasure
Independence in the end is the fruit of injustice.
Voltaire
Revolutions and Revolutionaries
Every abuse ought to be reformed, unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself.
Voltaire
Reform
To announce truths is an infallible receipt for being persecuted.
Voltaire
Truth
Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
Voltaire
Song and Singing
Let us work without theorizing, Tis the only way to make life endurable.
Voltaire
Theory
Truth is a fruit which should not be plucked until it is ripe.
Voltaire
Truth
Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason.
Voltaire
Reason
The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.
Voltaire
Reason
Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.
Voltaire
Translation
I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are paying your annuities. It is the only pleasure I have left.
Voltaire
Retirement
He who doesn t have the spirit of his time, has all its misery.
Voltaire
Spirit and Spirituality
Tears are the silent language of grief.
Voltaire
Tears
A witty saying proves nothing.
Voltaire
Speech
They use thought only to justify their injustices, and speech only to disguise their thoughts.
Voltaire
Thoughts and Thinking
The punishment of criminals should serve a purpose. When a man is hanged he is useless.
Voltaire
Punishment
Rest is a good thing, but boredom is its brother.
Voltaire
Rest
Self-love is the instrument of our preservation.
Voltaire
Self-love
It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.
Voltaire
Self-love
We owe respect to the living. To the dead we owe only truth.
Voltaire
Respectability
Judge a person by their questions, rather than their answers.
Voltaire
Questions
He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.
Voltaire
Questions
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
Voltaire
Taxes and Taxation
It is not known precisely where angels dwell -- whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God s pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.
Voltaire
Angels
We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies it is the first law of nature.
Voltaire
Faults
To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.
Voltaire
Death and Dying
By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.
Voltaire
Appreciation
A long dispute means that both parties are wrong
Voltaire
Argument
Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.
Voltaire
Divorce
In this country it s a good thing to kill an admiral now and then to encourage the others.
Voltaire
Army and Navy
Men argue, nature acts.
Voltaire
Argument
Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.
Voltaire
Ancestry
Animals have these advantages over man: They have no theologians to instruct them, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
Voltaire
Animals
Every man is the creature of the age in which he lives; very few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.
Voltaire
Age and Aging
Weakness on both sides is, the motto of all quarrels.
Voltaire
Argument
If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new.
Voltaire
Adventure
Work banishes those three great evils: boredom, vice and poverty.
Voltaire
Work
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.
Voltaire
Virginity
You can never correct your work well until you have forgotten it.
Voltaire
Writers and Writing
Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.
Voltaire
Vice
He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.
Voltaire
Wisdom