Voltaire Quotes

mankind have a little corrupted nature, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves; God has given them neither cannon of four-and-twenty pounders, nor bayonets; and yet they have made cannon and bayonets to destroy one another.

Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

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

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

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

She blushed and so did he. She greeted him in a faltering voice, and he spoke to her without knowing what he was saying.

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

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

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.

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.

Men argue nature acts.

Let us work without reasoning,' said Martin; 'it is the only way to make life endurable.

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.

Better is the enemy of the good.

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

Speaking of Newton but also commenting more broadly on education and the Enlightenment: "I have seen a professor of mathematics only because he was great in his vocation, buried like a king who had done well by his subjects.

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

The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.

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.

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

Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.

Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.

Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts florish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any expirienced in a town when it is under siege.

All the known world excepting only savage nations is governed by books.

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

One should always cite what one does not understand at all in the language one understands the least.

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.

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

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

Men argue. Nature acts.

What a pessimist you are!" exclaimed Candide."That is because I know what life is," said Martin.

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

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.

If God did not exist, He would have to be invented. But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.

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

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

Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.

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

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is.

Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors.

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.

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

Fear could never make a virtue.

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

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

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

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

All our ancient history, as one of our wits remarked, is no more than accepted fiction.

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

A fondness for roving, for making a name for themselves in their onw country, and for boasting of what they had seen in their travels, was so strong in our two wanderers, that they resolved to be no longer happy; and demanded permission of the king to leave the country.

England has forty-two religions and only two sauces.

Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.

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

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