Voltaire Quotes - Page 2

Don't think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money.

And to every man has been assigned a good and an evil angel; one assisting him and the other annoying him, from his cradle to his coffin.

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

England has forty-two religions and only two sauces.

It is not improbable that in hot countries, monkeys may have enslaved girls.

The Jews are an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours kindle it at home communicate it to others and it becomes the property of all.

Pleasure is the object duty and the goal of all rational creatures.

Doubt is not a pleasant state but certainty is a ridiculous one.

It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part.

He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.

The heart has its own reasons that reason can't understand.

We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one

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

Answer me, you who believe that animals are only machines. Has nature arranged for this animal to have all the machinery of feelings only in order for it not to have any at all?

Work banishes those three great evils boredom vice and poverty.

I never was ruined but twice - once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I gained one.

Go into the London Stock Exchange – a more respectable place than many a court – and you will see representatives from all nations gathered together for the utility of men. Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt. Here the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist and the Anglican accepts a promise from the Quaker. On leaving these peaceful and free assemblies some go to the Synagogue and others for a drink, this one goes to be baptized in a great bath in the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, that one has his son’s foreskin cut and has some Hebrew words he doesn’t understand mumbled over the child, others go to heir church and await the inspiration of God with their hats on, and everybody is happy.

If they're from the village, you take them to the inn. If they're from the city, you treat them with respect when they are beautiful and throw them on the highway when they are dead.

It is dangerous to be right, when the government is wrong

Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.

Love truth, but pardon error.

The best is the enemy of the good.

By what incomprehensible mechanism are our organs held in subjection to sentiment and thought? How is it that a single melancholy idea shall disturb the whole course of the blood; and that the blood should in turn communicate irregularities to the human understanding? What is that unknown fluid which certainly exists and which, quicker and more active than light, flies in less than the twinkling of an eye into all the channels of life,—produces sensations, memory, joy or grief, reason or frenzy,—recalls with horror what we would choose to forget; and renders a thinking animal, either a subject of admiration, or an object of pity and compassion?

It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.

What's optimism? said Cacambo. Alas, said Candide, it is a mania for saying things are well when one is in hell.

You (Pindar) who possessed the talent of speaking much without saying anything.

If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal nor the philosophical writings of Cicero.

S'il n'existait pas Dieu il faudrait l'inventer." (If God did not exist he would have to be invented.)

If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new.

He wanted to know how they prayed to God in El Dorado. "We do not pray to him at all," said the reverend sage. "We have nothing to ask of him. He has given us all we want, and we give him thanks continually.

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.")

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.

Nature has always had more force than education.

The secret of being tiresome is in telling everything.

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciproc

It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.

The Dutch fetishes who converted me tell me every Sunday that the blacks and whites are all children of one father, whom they call Adam. As for me, I do not understand anything of genealogies; but if what these preachers say is true, we are all second cousins; and you must allow that it is impossible to be worse treated by our relations than we are.

on doit des égards aux vivants, on ne doit aux morts que la vérité.

Men argue nature acts.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

The fate of a nation has often depended on the good or bad digestion of a prime minister.

In cities where peace and the arts flourish, men are more consumed by jealousy, worry, and anxiety than they are in cities under the blight of a besieging army. Private sorrows are more bitter than public suffering.

We never live but we are always in the expectation of living.

Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.

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

You are very harsh.''I have seen the world.

Morality is everywhere the same for all men, therefore it comes from God; sects differ, therefore they are the work of men.

Better is the enemy of the good.

People will continue to commit atrocities as long as they believe in absurdities.

It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.

Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.

I assert nothing, I content myself with believing that more is possible than people think.

Providence has given us hope and sleep as a compensation for the many cares of life.

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.

Perhaps, if I use my reason in good faith, I may suceed in discovering some ray of probability to lighten me in the dark night of nature. And if this faint dawn which I seek does not come to me, I shall be consoled to think that my ignorance is invincible; that knowledge which is forbidden me is assuredly useless to me; and that the great Being will not punish me for having sought a knowledge of him and failed to obtain it.

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

He who thinks himself wise O heavens! is a great fool.

Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.