Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire) Quote

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our d...
VOLTAIRE (FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE)

But nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having studied nature from his youth, knows the...
VOLTAIRE (FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE)

We cannot wish for that we know not. [Fr., On ne peut desirer ce qu'on ne connait pas.]
VOLTAIRE (FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE)

How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how horrible is it to be a mischievous and...
VOLTAIRE (FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE)

The first king was a successful soldier; He who serves well his country has no need of ancestors. ...
VOLTAIRE (FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE)

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die. [Fr., La...
VOLTAIRE (FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE)

I have always made one prayer to God, a very short one. Here it is: "My God, make our enemies ver...
VOLTAIRE (FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE)

If the bookseller happens to desire a privilege for his merchandise, whether he is selling Rabelais...
VOLTAIRE (FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE)

Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound. [Fr., La patrie est aux lieux ou l'ame est e...
VOLTAIRE (FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE)

It is today, my dear, that I take a perilous leap. [Fr., C'est demain, me belle amie, que je fais ...
VOLTAIRE (FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE)

Injustice in the end produces independence. [Fr., L'injustice a la fin produit l'independance.]
VOLTAIRE (FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE)

The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to complimen...
VOLTAIRE (FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE)

All styles are good except the tiresome kind. [Fr., Tous les genres sont bons, hors le genre ennuy...
VOLTAIRE (FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE)

Wishers and woulders be small householders.
VOLTAIRE (FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE)

Your Majesty may think me an impatient sick man, and that the Turks are even sicker.
VOLTAIRE (FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET VOLTAIRE)

Love truth, but pardon error.
FRANCOIS VOLTAIRE

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.
FRANCOIS VOLTAIRE

'That is indisputable,' was the answer, 'but in this country it is a good thing to kill an admiral f...
FRANCOIS VOLTAIRE

Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

My life is a battle.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

You can never correct your work well until you have forgotten it.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Every man is the creature of the age in which he lives; very few are able to raise themselves above ...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

I was never ruined but twice; once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I won one.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies it is the firs...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

I know of no great man except those who have rendered great services to the human race.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

May God defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Work keeps at bay, three great evils -- boredom, vice and need.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Work banishes those three great evils: boredom, vice and poverty.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

To announce truths is an infallible receipt for being persecuted.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Truth is a fruit which should not be plucked until it is ripe.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

They use thought only to justify their injustices, and speech only to disguise their thoughts.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

He who dies before many witnesses always does so with courage.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The Pope is an idol whose hands are tied and whose feet are kissed.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

You must have the devil in you to succeed in the arts.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

God is a comic, playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Liberty, then, about which so many volumes have been written is, when accurately defined, only the p...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

This poem will never reach its destination. On Rousseau's Ode To Posterity
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The only way to compel men to speak good of us is to do it.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

A witty saying proves nothing.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

What a heavy burden is a name that has become famous too soon.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

My prayer to God is a very short one: O Lord, make my enemies look ridiculous! God has granted it.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The discover of what is true, and the practice of that which is good, are the two most important obj...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The superfluous is very necessary.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

How I like the boldness of the English, how I like the people who say what they think!
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

When he to whom a person speaks does not understand, and he who speaks does not understand himself, ...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The pursuit of what is true and the practice of what is good are the two most important objects of p...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what ...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The public is a ferocious beast. One must either chain it up or flee from it.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Perfection is attained by slow degrees; she requires the hand of time.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Originality is nothing but judicious plagiarism.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Shun idleness is the rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Animals have these advantages over man: They have no theologians to instruct them, their funerals co...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

It is not known precisely where angels dwell -- whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Let us work without theorizing, 'Tis the only way to make life endurable.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

A long dispute means that both parties are wrong
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Men argue, nature acts.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Weakness on both sides is, the motto of all quarrels.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Doubt is not a pleasant mental state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

All kinds are good except the kind that bores you.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Common sense is not so common.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

One of the chief misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowardly.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at ...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

'That is indisputable,' was the answer, 'but in this country it is a good thing to kill an admiral f...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Self-love is the instrument of our preservation.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they kn...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and h...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

I know of nothing more laughable than a doctor who does not die of old age.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some w...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Tears are the silent language of grief.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The best is the enemy of the good.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

I am a little deaf, a little blind, a little impotent, and on top of this are two or three abominabl...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The great consolation in life is to say what one thinks.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

History is just the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boo...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

All people are equal, it is not birth, it is virtue alone that makes the difference.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

In my life, I have prayed but one prayer: oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

It is new fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The man visited by ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for realities is an enthusiast; the man w...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

It is only through timidity that states are lost.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Let us read and let us dance - two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is ind...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Exaggeration is the inseparable companion of greatness.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two, th...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Independence in the end is the fruit of injustice.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Judge a person by their questions, rather than their answers.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The punishment of criminals should serve a purpose. When a man is hanged he is useless.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are paying your annuities. It is the only pl...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

We owe respect to the living. To the dead we owe only truth.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Every abuse ought to be reformed, unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those wh...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Paradise is Where I Am.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

He who doesn't have the spirit of his time, has all its misery.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

We are rarely proud when we are alone.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

I die adoring God,loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy; the mad daughter of a wise mother.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

When one man speaks to another man who doesn't understand him, and when the man who's speaking no lo...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of...
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.
VOLTAIRE (FRANçOIS-MARIE AROUET)

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the fi...
VOLTAIRE

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.
VOLTAIRE

Such is the feebleness of humanity, such is its perversity, that doubtless it is better for it to be...
VOLTAIRE

The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.
VOLTAIRE

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.
VOLTAIRE

Wherever there is a settled society, religion is necessary; the laws cover manifest crimes, and reli...
VOLTAIRE

My life is a struggle.
VOLTAIRE

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild ...
VOLTAIRE

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.
VOLTAIRE

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is ind...
VOLTAIRE

The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.
VOLTAIRE

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our da...
VOLTAIRE

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.
VOLTAIRE

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.
VOLTAIRE

He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead.
VOLTAIRE

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.
VOLTAIRE

The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.
VOLTAIRE

Love has features which pierce all hearts, he wears a bandage which conceals the faults of those bel...
VOLTAIRE

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.
VOLTAIRE

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Opposi...
VOLTAIRE

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelat...
VOLTAIRE

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ev...
VOLTAIRE

It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.
VOLTAIRE

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.
VOLTAIRE

Use, do not abuse... neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
VOLTAIRE

We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.
VOLTAIRE

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.
VOLTAIRE

It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has no...
VOLTAIRE

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.
VOLTAIRE

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, c...
VOLTAIRE

We are rarely proud when we are alone.
VOLTAIRE

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.
VOLTAIRE

When men do not have healthy notions of the Divinity, false ideas supplant them, just as in bad time...
VOLTAIRE

The best is the enemy of the good.
VOLTAIRE

Clever tyrants are never punished.
VOLTAIRE

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.
VOLTAIRE

Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.
VOLTAIRE

The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.
VOLTAIRE

Nature has always had more force than education.
VOLTAIRE

History should be written as philosophy.
VOLTAIRE

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.
VOLTAIRE

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well ...
VOLTAIRE

Who serves his country well has no need of ancestors.
VOLTAIRE

Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.
VOLTAIRE

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.
VOLTAIRE

We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.
VOLTAIRE

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that ...
VOLTAIRE

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.
VOLTAIRE

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
VOLTAIRE

Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to pub...
VOLTAIRE

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.
VOLTAIRE

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.&#...
VOLTAIRE

Common sense is not so common. [Fr., Le sens commun n'est pas si common.] - Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire),

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Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire)

Common sense is not so common. [Fr., Le sens commun n'est pas si common.] - Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire),

Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire)

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