Voltaire Quotes

I tried to believe in God, but I confess to you that God meant nothing in my life, and that in my secret heart I too felt a void where my childhood faith had been. But probably this feeling belongs only to individuals in transition. The grandchildren of these pessimists will frolic in the freedom of their lives, and have more happiness than poor Christians darkened with fear of Hell.

Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.

It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.

We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation.

God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.

It is proved...that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose.

Luck is a word devoid of sense nothing can exist without a cause.

What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her; but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

Perhaps there is nothing greater on earth than the sacrifice of youth and beauty, often of high birth, made by the gentle sex in order to work in hospitals for the relief of human misery, the sight of which is so revolting to our delicacy. Peoples separated from the Roman religion have imitated but imperfectly so generous a charity.

All men are by nature free; you have therefore an undoubted liberty to depart whenever you please, but will have many and great difficulties to encounter in passing the frontiers.

The infinitely little have pride infinitely great.

If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.

Men argue. Nature acts.

When it is a question of money everybody is of the same religion.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere.

If God made us in his image we have certainly returned the compliment.

The secret of boring people lies in telling them everything.

Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

I do not know by what power I think; but well I know that I should never have thought without the assistance of my senses. That there are immaterial and intelligent substances I do not at all doubt; but that it is impossible for God to communicate the faculty of thinking to matter, I doubt very much. I revere the Eternal Power, to which it would ill become me to prescribe bounds. I affirm nothing, and am contented to believe that many things are possible than are usually thought so".

Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.

Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.

If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones.

God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.

What is tolerance? It is a necessary consequence of humanity. We are all fallible, let us then pardon each other's follies. This is the first principle of natural right.

In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.

Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

I have been studying for forty years, which is to say forty wasted years; I teach others yet am ignorant of everything; this state of affairs fills my soul with so much humiliation and disgust that my life is intolerable. I was born in Time, I live in Time, and do not know what Time is. I find myself at a point between two eternities, as our wise men say, yet I have no conception of eternity. I am composed of matter, I think, but have never been able to discover what produces thought. I do not know whether or not I think with my head the same way that I hold things with my hands. Not only is the origin of my thought unknown to me, but the origin of my movements is equally hidden: I do not know why I exist. Yet every day people ask me questions on all these issues. I must give answers, yet have nothing worth saying, so I talk a great deal, and am confused and ashamed of myself afterwards for having spoken.

A good imitation is the most perfect originality.

I die adoring God loving my friends not hating my enemies and detesting superstition.

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.

Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion

There are truths that are not for all men nor for all times.

Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. (The perfect is the enemy of the good.)

Often the prudent far from making their destinies succumb to them.

Never having been able to succeed in the world he took his revenge by speaking ill of it.

He showed, in a few words, that it is not sufficient to throw together a few incidents that are to be met with in every romance, and that to dazzle the spectator the thought should be new, without being farfetched; frequently sublime, but always natural; the author should have a thorough knowledge of the human heart and make it speak properly; he should be a complete poet, without showing an affectation of it in any of the characters of his piece; he should be a perfect master of his language, speak it with all its pruity and with the utmost harmony, and yet so as not to make the sense a slave to the rhyme. Whoever, added he, neglects any one of these rules, though he may write two or three tragedies with tolerable success, will never be reckoned in the number of good authors.

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.

Shall I not render a service to men in speaking to them only of morality? This morality is so pure, so holy, so universal, so clear, so ancient, that it seems to come from God himself, like the light which we regard as the first of his works. Has he not given men self-love to secure their preservation; benevolence, beneficence, and virtue to control their self-love; the natural need to form a society; pleasure to enjoy, pain to warn us to enjoy in moderation, passions to spur us to great deeds, and wisdom to curb our passions? 

We offer up prayers to God only because we have made Him after our own image. We treat Him like a Pasha or a Sultan who is capable of being exasperated and appeased.

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

Never having been able to succeed in the world, he took his revenge by speaking ill of it.

‎Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.

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

I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?

I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

I've decided to be happy because it's good for my health.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is.

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

Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.

The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important objects of philosophy.

I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are paying your annuities. It is the only pleasure I have left.

Wisdom must yield to superstition's rules,Who arms with bigot zeal the hand of fools.

My dear young lady, when you are in love, and jealous, and have been flogged by the Inquisition, there's no knowing what you may do.