Voltaire Quotes

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

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

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.
Voltaire

The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.
Voltaire

The secret of being a bore... is to tell everything.
Voltaire

The secret of being tiresome is in telling everything.
Voltaire

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

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.
Voltaire

The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.
Voltaire

The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.
Voltaire

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

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
Voltaire

This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.
Voltaire

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire

Though one sits in meditation in a particular place, the Self in him can exercise its influence far away. Though still, it moves everywhere... The Self cannot be known by anyone who desists not from unrighteous ways, controls not his senses, stills not his mind, and practices not meditation.
Voltaire

To be at peace in crime! ah, who can thus flatter himself.
Voltaire

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

To hold a pen is to be at war.
Voltaire

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
Voltaire

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.
Voltaire

To them it seemed that the gifts of an enemy were to be dreaded.
Voltaire

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

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

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

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.
Voltaire

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature.
Voltaire

We are rarely proud when we are alone.
Voltaire

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

We cannot wish for that we know not.
Voltaire

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.
Voltaire

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

Weakness on both sides is, as we know, the motto of all quarrels.
Voltaire

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

What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.
Voltaire

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

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.
Voltaire

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.
Voltaire

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

Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors.
Voltaire

You see many stars at night in the sky but find them not when the sun rises; can you say that there are no stars in the heaven of day? So, O man! because you behold not God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God.
Voltaire

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

Your Majesty may think me an impatient sick man, and that the Turks are even sicker.
Voltaire

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