Voltaire Quotes

We have our arts, the ancients had theirs... We cannot raise obelisks a hundred feet high in a single piece, but our meridians are more exact.

What would constitute useful history? That which should teach us our duties and our rights, without appearing to teach them.

The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

You can never correct your work well until you have forgotten it.

It would be easier to subjugate the entire universe through force than the minds of a single village.

The superstitious man is to the rogue what the slave is to the tyrant.

All the arts are brothers; each one is a light to the others.

A torch lighted in the forests of America set all Europe in conflagration.

This poem will never reach its destination. On Rousseau's Ode To Posterity

There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics.

History in general is a collection of crimes, follies, and misfortunes among which we have now and then met with a few virtues, and some happy times.

It is not a mistress I have lost but half of myself, a soul for which my soul seems to have been made.

Men fed upon carnage, and drinking strong drinks, have all an impoisoned and acrid blood which drives them mad in a hundred different ways.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

For can anything be sillier than to insist on carrying a burden one would continually much rather throw to the ground?

Let us help one another to bear our burdens.

Not all citizens can be equally strong; but they can all be equally free.

The abuse of grace is affectation, as the abuse of the sublime is absurdity; all perfection is nearly a fault.

Excellently observed", answered Candide; "but let us cultivate our garden.

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

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

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

Our priests are not what a silly populace supposes; all their learning consists in our credulity.

Another century and there will not be a Bible on earth!

A physician is one who pours drugs of which he knows little into a body of which he knows less.

All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws

Work is often the father of pleasure.

As you know, the Inquisition is an admirable and wholly Christian invention to make the pope and the monks more powerful and turn a whole kingdom into hypocrites.

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

When we cannot use the compass of mathematics or the torch of experience...it is certain we cannot take a single step forward.

I keep to old books, for they teach me something; from the new I learn very little

The superfluous is the most necessary.

The policy of man consists, at first, in endeavoring to arrive at a state equal to that of animals, whom nature has furnished with food, clothing, and shelter.

There's scarce a point whereon mankind agree - So well as in their boast of killing me; I boast of nothing, but when I've a mind - I think I can be even with mankind

Who are you, Nature? I live in you; for fifty years I have been seeking you, and I have not found you yet.

One of the chief misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowardly.

I envy animals for two things - their ignorance of evil to come, and their ignorance of what is said about them.

If God did not exist, he would have to be invented.

Your destiny is that of a man, your vows those of a god.

Nothing could be smarter, more splendid, more brilliant, better drawn up than two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, cannons, formed a harmony such as never been heard in hell.

All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables that have been agreed upon

Friends should be preferred to kings.

Know that the secret of the arts is to correct nature.

Man is free the moment he wants to be.

When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?

This is no time to make new enemies.

You write your name in the snow Yet say nothing.

The supposed right of intolerance is absurd and barbaric. It is the right of the tiger; nay, it is far worse, for tigers do but tear in order to have food, while we rend each other for paragraphs.

If we do not exert the right of eating our neighbor, it is because we have other means of making good cheer

No one is ignorant that our character and turn of mind are intimately connected with the water-closet.