Voltaire's Quotes & Sayings

Constant happiness is the philosopher's stone of the soul. — Voltaire

I expressed just now my mistrust of what is called Spiritualism - ... I owe it a trifle for a message said to come from Voltaire's Ghost. It was asked, Are you not now convinced of another world? and rapped out, There is no other world - Death is only an incident in Life. — William De Morgan

The closest that either Voltaire or the other historical geniuses of the age -- Hume and Gibbon -- came to understanding unreason's creative potentialities was in their Ironic criticism of themselves and in their own efforts to make sense out of history. This, at least, led them to view themselves as being as potentially flawed as the cripples they conceived to be acting out the spectacle of history. — Hayden White

If we would destroy the Christian religion, we must first of all destroy man's belief in the Bible. — Voltaire

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

Alas ... I too have known love, that ruler of hearts, that soul of our soul: it's never brought me anything except one kiss and twenty kicks in the rump. How could such a beautiful cause produce such an abominable effect on you? — Voltaire

He's over your head! He was, but naturally I'd flung myself into the Sea of Voltaire anyway and emerged with nothing more than several aphorisms. — Sue Monk Kidd

What can be feared when one is doing one's duty? I know the rage of my enemies. I know all their slanders; but when one only tries to do good to men and when one does not offend heaven, one can fear nothing, neither during life nor after death. — Voltaire

Fairest lady," said Candide, "when a man is in love, jealous, and whipped by the Inquisition, he no longer knows what he's doing. — Voltaire

It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode. — Voltaire

Goth was sort of the melancholy cousin of punk that says: there's a lot of evil in this world, there's a lot of very mean spirited people and that makes me sad. — Aurelio Voltaire Hernandez

One of the towering figures of the age of Enlightenment was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, known to this day in German-speaking lands as the poet of princes and prince of poets. Unlike Voltaire, he openly practiced esoteric disciplines, particularly alchemy. He wrote a famous verse about the Cathars, which translated says: "There were those who knew the Father. What became of them? Oh, they took them and burned them!" Goethe's chief work, of course, is his Faust. As noted in chapter 8, the figure of Faust was inspired by the image of the early Gnostic teacher Simon Magus, one of whose honorific names was Faustus. While in Christopher Marlowe's sixteenth-century play, — Stephan A. Hoeller

Needless to say since Christ's expiation not one single Christian has been known to sin, or die. — Voltaire

Our libraries are so to speak prisons where we've locked up our intellectual giants, naturally Kant has been put in solitary confinement, like Nietzsche, like Schopenhauer, like Pascal, like Voltaire, like Montaigne, all the real giants have been put in solitary confinement, all the others in mass confinement, but everyone for ever and ever, my friend, for all time and unto eternity, that's the truth. — Thomas Bernhard

Just for the sake of amusement, ask each passenger to tell you his story, and if you find a single one who hasn't often cursed his life, who hasn't told himself he's the most miserable man in the world, you can throw me overboard head first. — Voltaire

You guys, stop misattributing white nationalist quotes to me. Like, super seriously, it's not cool, dudes. — Voltaire

It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color. — Voltaire

The Baron was one of Westphalia's most potent aristocrats, since his mansion boasted both a door and windows. — Voltaire

They could not help loving anything that made them laugh. The Lisbon earthquake was "embarrassing to the physicists and humiliating to theologians" (Barbier). It robbed Voltaire of his optimism. In the huge waves which engulfed the town, in the chasms which opened underneath it, in volcanic flames which raged for days in the outskirts, some 50,000 people perished. But to the courtiers of Louis XV it was an enormous joke. M. de Baschi, Madame de Pompadour's brother-in-law, was French Ambassador there at the time. He saw the Spanish Ambassador killed by the arms of Spain, which toppled onto his head from the portico of his embassy; Baschi then dashed into the house and rescued his colleague's little boy whom he took, with his own family, to the country. When he got back to Versailles he kept the whole Court in roars of laughter for a week with his account of it all. "Have you heard Baschi on the earthquake? — Nancy Mitford

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. — S.G. Tallentyre

I only read books if Voltaire's cock has been dipped in red ink and rolled over the cover. — Greg Proops

Now it was winter. He hated the damp of Paris. "Behold me at length on the vaunted scene of Europe!" Jefferson wrote in 1785.48 "I find the general fate of humanity here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire's observation offers itself perpetually, that every man here must be either the hammer or the anvil." As much as Jefferson loved France, residence abroad gave him a greater appreciation for his own nation. "My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy," Jefferson wrote Monroe.49 "I confess I had no idea of it myself. — Jon Meacham

I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it. Nor can I embark in search of the savages of Canada, because the maladies to which I am condemned render a European surgeon necessary to me; because war is going on in those regions; and because the example of our actions has made the savages nearly as bad as ourselves. [in response to Rousseau's "The Social Contract"] — Voltaire

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. — Voltaire

Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors. — Voltaire

The so-called intellectual consumes himself in what he considers pathbreaking work and in the end has only succeeded in making himself ridiculous, whether he's called Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, it doesn't matter, even if he was Kleist or Voltaire we still see a pitiful being who has misused his head and finally driven himself into nonsense. Who's been rolled over and passed over by history. We've locked up the great thinkers in our bookcases, from which they keep staring at us, sentenced to eternal ridicule, he said, I — Thomas Bernhard

If there's life on other planets, then the earth is the Universe's insane asylum. — Voltaire

To find why this sheep's wool was red; and the prize was awarded to a learned man of the North, who demonstrated by A plus B minus C divided by Z, that the sheep must be red, and die of the rot. — Voltaire

Voltaire," says M. Guizot, "was the first person in France who spoke of Shakespeare's genius; and although he spoke of him merely as a barbarian genius, the French public were of the opinion that he had said too much in his favor. Indeed, they thought it nothing less than profanation to apply the words genius and glory to dramas which they considered as crude as they were coarse. — William Shakespeare

The measures of the reformers took no account of all this which seemed to me so obvious. The reformers themselves apparently did not see that the State, as an arbiter of economic advantage, must necessarily be a potential instrument of economic exploitation. In fact, these are but two ways of saying the same thing, for, as Voltaire saw so clearly, advantage to the State's beneficiaries means disadvantage to those who are not its beneficiaries. By putting a tariff on steel, for example, the State simply took a great deal of money out of the pockets of American purchasers of steel, and put it in Mr. Carnegie's; it acted ad hoc as Mr. Carnegie's instrument of exploitation. Neither — Albert Jay Nock

My life's dream has been a perpetual nightmare. — Voltaire

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. — Voltaire

Well, there's just some universal truths in a way that I've just observed to be true. You read Voltaire. You read modern literature. Anywhere you go, there's these observations about romantic love and what it does people, and these rotten feelings that rarely are people meaning to do that to each other. — Feist

That strange premature genius Chatterton has couched in one line the quintessence of what Voltaire has said in many pages: Reason, a thorn in Revelation's side. — Horace Walpole

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

Men appear to prefer ruining one another's fortunes, and cutting each other's throats about a few paltry villages, to extending the grand means of human happiness. — Voltaire

Before receiving your instruction, I must tell you what happened to me one day. I had just had a closet built at the end of my garden. I heard a mole arguing with a cockchafer; 'Here's a fine structure,' said the mole, 'it must have been a very powerful mole who did this work.' 'You're joking,' said the cockchafer; 'it's a cockchafer full of genius who is the architect of this building.' From that moment I resolved never to argue. — Voltaire

What can you say to a man who tells you he prefers obeying God rather than men, and that as a result he's certain he'll go to heaven if he cuts your throat? — Voltaire

Unfortunately we did not attend Voltaire's dictum to define our terms before we began. The result was disagreement on all issues. — James Aldridge

There are some men who are counted great because they represent the actuality of their own age, and mirror it as it is. Such an one was Voltaire, of whom it was epigrammatically said: 'he expressed everybody's thoughts better than anyone.' But there are other men who attain greatness because they embody the potentiality of their own day and magically reflect the future. They express the thoughts which will be everybody's two or three centuries after them. Such as one was Descartes. — Thomas Henry Huxley

I tend to look at the world more from Voltaire's perspective. Incidentally, if you haven't read Candide lately, it's a fabulous book. It's riotously, laugh-out-loud funny in a way that no Shakespeare comedy will ever be. — George Meyer

One day Cunegonde, while walking near the castle, in a little wood which they called a park, saw between the bushes, Dr. Pangloss giving a lesson in experimental natural philosophy to her mother's chamber-maid, a little brown wench, very pretty and very docile. As Miss Cunegonde had a great disposition for the sciences, she breathlessly observed the repeated experiments of which she was a witness; she clearly perceived the force of the Doctor's reasons, the effects, and the causes; she turned back greatly flurried, quite pensive, and filled with the desire to be learned; dreaming that she might well be a sufficient reason for young Candide, and he for her. — Voltaire

Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden. — Voltaire

The philosopher Sir James Mackintosh had said that the powers of a man's mind were proportionate to the quantity of coffee he drank, and Voltaire had knocked back fifty cups of it a day, so Ianto reckoned there had to be something in it. And saving Cardiff from the kinds of things that came through the Rift called for quick, inspired thinking, so Ianto took it upon himself to make sure the coffee was good. Ianto Jones, saving the world with a dark roast. — Phil Ford

If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two, they would cut each other's throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness. — Voltaire

The age-long history of thinking on gravitation, too, was erased from the collective consciousness, and that force somehow became the serendipitous child of Newton's genius. The new attitude is well illustrated by the anecdote of the apple, a legend spread by Voltaire, one of the most active and vehement erasers of the past ... The need to build the myth of an ex nihilo creation of modern science gave rise to much impassioned rhetoric. — Lucio Russo

Freedom is to depend only on the law and not on men's whims. — Voltaire

It is, it seems to me, to stop one's eyes and understanding to maintain that there is no design in nature; and if there is design, there is an intelligent cause, there exists a God. People — Voltaire

History contains little beyond a list of people who have accommodate themselves with other people's property. — Voltaire

You've got to roll with the punches to get to what's real. — David Lee Roth

What! A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my family. I tell you to get rid of that beast, and you ask me, What shall we put in its place!" Voltaire's — Mitchell Stephens

If it's too silly to be said, it can always be sung. — Voltaire

My Lady Baroness, who weighed three hundred and fifty pounds, consequently was a person of no small consideration; and then she did the honors of the house with a dignity that commanded universal respect. Her daughter was about seventeen years of age, fresh-colored, comely, plump, and desirable. The Baron's son seemed to be a youth in every respect worthy of the father he sprung from. Pangloss, the preceptor, was the oracle of the family, and little Candide listened to his instructions with all the simplicity natural to his age and disposition. — Voltaire

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

We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence — Voltaire

But he had been the victim of the world's most common crime - his youth had been kidnapped by a thing called time. It had likely also been raped, dismembered, and buried somewhere never to be seen again — Aurelio Voltaire

The quality of life does not depend on happiness alone, but also on what one does to be happy. If one fails to develop goals that give meaning to one's existence, if one does not use the mind to its fullest, then good feelings fulfill just a fraction of the potential we possess. A person who achieves contentment by withdrawing from the world to "cultivate his own garden," like Voltaire's Candide, cannot be said to lead an excellent life. Without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

You're a bitter man," said Candide.
That's because I've lived," said Martin. — Voltaire

In editing a volume of Washington's private letters for the Long Island Historical Society, I have been much impressed by indications that this great historic personality represented the Liberal religious tendency of his time. That tendency was to respect religious organizations as part of the social order, which required some minister to visit the sick, bury the dead, and perform marriages. It was considered in nowise inconsistent with disbelief of the clergyman's doctrines to contribute to his support, or even to be a vestryman in his church.
In his many letters to his adopted nephew and younger relatives, he admonishes them about their manners and morals, but in no case have I been able to discover any suggestion that they should read the Bible, keep the Sabbath, go to church, or any warning against Infidelity.
Washington had in his library the writings of Paine, Priestley, Voltaire, Frederick the Great, and other heretical works.
[The Religion of Washington] — Moncure D. Conway

It's not inequality which is the real misfortune, it's dependence — Voltaire

History is the study of the world's crime — Voltaire

Shocked? I consider Bob one of the constellations of our time - of our country - America - a bright, magnificent constellation. Besides, all the constellations - not alone of this but of any time - shock the average intelligence for a while. In one respect that helps to prove it a constellation. Think of Voltaire, Paine, Hicks, not to say anything of modern men whom we could mention.

{Whitman's thoughts on his close friend, the great Robert Ingersoll} — Walt Whitman

It's a terrible thing, what we did," said Francis abruptly. "I mean, this man was not Voltaire we killed. But still. It's a shame. I feel bad about it."
"Well, of course, I do too," said Henry matter-of-factly. "But not bad enough to want to go to jail for it."
Francis snorted and poured himself another shot of whiskey and drank it straight off. "No," he said. "Not that bad. — Donna Tartt

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

Books, of which the principles are diseased or deformed, must be kept on the shelf of the scholar, as the man of science preserves monsters in glasses. They belong to the study of the mind's morbid anatomy, and ought to be accurately labelled. Voltaire will still be a wit, notwithstanding he is a scoffer; and we may admire the brilliant spots and eyes of the viper, if we acknowledge its venom and call it a reptile. — Robert Aris Willmott

A hundred times I was upon the point of killing myself; but still I loved life. This ridiculous foible is perhaps one of our most fatal characteristics; for is there anything more absurd than to wish to carry continually a burden which one can always throw down? to detest existence and yet to cling to one's existence? in brief, to caress the serpent which devours us, till he has eaten our very heart? — Voltaire

God's only excuse is that He doesn't exist, remarked Voltaire after a natural disaster that killed many people. Nietzsche loved this quote and wished he'd coined it! — Voltaire

Voltaire's Si Dieu n'existait pas , il faudrait l'inventer ("If God did not exist, he would have to be invented"). — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Treatise of the Three Impostors is a book that enjoyed centuries of notorious nonexistence until (as Voltaire would say) it became necessary to invent it. Georges Minois writes with empathy, erudition, and a novelist's sense of buildup and timing, weaving in the parallel story of Europe's courageous freethinkers. In the face of today's social and even legal pressures against criticizing religion, it is good to see an honorable French tradition asserting itself. — Joscelyn Godwin

The Baron's lady weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds, and was therefore a person of great consideration.. — Voltaire

Twenty-volume folios will never make a revolution. It's the little pocket pamphlets that are to be feared. — Voltaire

Aidan: "From the moment I laid eyes on her she was trouble to my concentration, my libido, and my mental health. After six weeks of pursuit, I'd trapped her between my upraised arms against a book case, somewhere betwixt Shakespeare and Voltaire. "I want the witchcraft in your lips," I'd whispered. Instead of arguing, she grabbed me by the ears. She'd been soft lips, liberal tongue and nipping teeth. I'd contributed a willing body and a vulgar groan. She'd drawn away, licked her lips and ducked underneath my arms. When she was about three yards from me, she's tilted her head up like a siren on the bow of a ship and pursed a devil-may-care smile at me before she bowed. She'd challenged me to pursue her, and I'd intended to, but when I pushed off, the bookcase fell backwards. I tumbled into a heap of literary tombs. I could still hear her laughing when the library's elevator door chimed closed. — Elizabeth Marx

The mirror is a worthless invention. The only way to truly see yourself is in the reflection of someone else's eyes. — Voltaire

To realize the Enlightenment ideals of formal equality, the rule of law, freedom of commerce, and religious toleration, Voltaire and many of the other philosophes looked to absolutist monarchs, whose policies they hoped to influence. The support of the philosophes for the expansion of the monarch's sovereign power was tactical. It arose not out of a principled belief in the throne, but out of the recognition that only a strong monarchy had the power to override the resistance to enlightened legislation by the privileged churches, estates, and corporations that made up continental European society. (p. 45) — Jerry Z. Muller

There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire - poison and antidote. — Bertrand Russell

So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbors. The citizen of the universe would be the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer. — Voltaire

When one man speaks to another man who doesn't understand him, and when a man who's speaking no longer understands, it's metaphysics. — Voltaire

In short, the alphabet was the origin of all man's knowledge, and of all his errors. — Voltaire

I found out and lost the only place I ever sort of regarded as home. Oh well. Best to stay in one's garden but Voltaire was a boring writer and sex is one of the greatest things there is. — Kathy Acker

If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other's throats; but if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace — Voltaire

How many plays have been written in France?' Candide asked the abbe.
'Five or six thousand.'
'That's a lot,' said Candide. 'How many of them are good?'
'Fifteen or sixteen,' replied the abbe.
'That's a lot,' said Martin. — Voltaire

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

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau! Mock on, mock on: 'Tis all in vain! You throw the sand against the wind, And the wind blows it back again. And every sand becomes a gem Reflected in the beams divine; Blown back they blind the mocking eye, But still in Israel's paths they shine. The atoms of Democritus And Newton's particles of light Are sands upon the Red Sea shore, Where Israel's tents do shine so bright. — William Blake

Every man can educate himself. It's shameful to put one's mind into the hands of those whom you wouldn't entrust with your money. Dare to think for yourself. — Voltaire

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? — Voltaire

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw's plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education? — Jiddu Krishnamurti

To ride a bicycle is in itself some protection against superstitious fears, since the bicycle is the product of pure reason applied to motion. Geometry at the service of man! Give me two spheres and a straight line and I will show you how far I can take them. Voltaire himself might have invented the bicycle, since it contributes so much to man's welfare and nothing at all to his bane. Beneficial to the health, it emits no harmful fumes and permits only the most decorous speeds. How can a bicycle ever be an implement of harm? — Angela Carter

You see, Mademoiselle, I have experience, I know the world. To pass the time, why don't you ask every passenger to tell you his life's story? And if there is a single one among them who has never cursed his life, who has not often told himself that he was the unhappiest of men, then you may throw me overboard, headfirst! — Voltaire

Every beauty, when out of it's place, is a beauty no longer. — Voltaire

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

A hundred times I have wanted to kill myself, but I was still in love with life. This absurd weakness is perhaps one of our deadliest attachments: can anything be more foolish than to keep carrying a fardel and yet keep wanting to throw it to the ground? To hold one's existence in horror, and yet cling to it? — Voltaire

It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him. — Voltaire

The spirit of property doubles a man's strength. — Voltaire

Changing a habit is hard work. But it's harder to find work that would be more fulfilling — Voltaire

And I think it was a great Frenchman, Voltaire, who said that the beginning of wisdom is the moment when one understands how little concerned with one's own life are other men, they who are so desperately preoccupied with their own. I knew nothing about you and that boy, nothing at all. — William Styron

Tolerance, which is one form of love of neighbor, must manifest itself not only in our personal relations, but also in the arena of society as well. In the world of opinion and politics, tolerance is that virtue by which liberated minds conquer the evils of bigotry and hatred. Tolerance implies more than forbearance or the passive enduring of ideas different from our own. Properly conceived, tolerance is the positive and cordial effort to understand another's beliefs, practices, and habits without necessarily sharing or accepting them. Tolerance quickens our appreciation and increases our respect for our neighbor's point of view. It goes even further; it assumes a militant aspect when the rights of an opponent are assailed. Voltaire's dictum, "I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," is for all ages and places the perfect utterance of the tolerant ideal. — Joshua Loth Liebman

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 — Voltaire

Oh, there's no toll," noticed Henry. "It costs twelve bucks coming into Manhattan, but I guess it's free going back to New Jersey."
"That should tell you something," said Villy crestfallen. — Aurelio 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

The doves, as we know, must be killed according to the law before Mary's purification can be acknowledged and ratified. Any ironic or irreverent disciple of Voltaire will find it difficult to resist making the obvious remark that, things being what they are, purity can be maintained only so long as there are innocent creatures to sacrifice in this world, whether turtledoves, lambs, or others. — Jose Saramago