Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
Voltaire Quotations
We found 82 matching quotations.
Once the people begin to reason, all is lost.
Use, do not abuse neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
May God defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.
All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.
Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.
As long as there are fools and rascals, there will be religions.
Work saves us from three great evils boredom, vice and need.
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.
Appreciation is a wonderful thing It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.
When we hear news we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.
If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.
This is no time to make new enemies.
You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.
"Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
There is a wide difference between speaking to deceive, and being silent to be impenetrable.
This poem will never reach its destination.
I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men that the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship towers considerably above him who imagined innate ideas.
The secret of being boring is to say everything.
England has forty-two religions and only two sauces.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.
[Optimism is] the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.
Men are equal it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.
The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.
Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.
Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
The way to become boring is to say everything.
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him.
Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
I have lost the half of myself ? a soul for which mine was made.
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.
The multitude of books is making us ignorant.
Regimen is superior to medicine.
Canada: A few acres of snow.
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten oneself and others.
We are rarely proud when we are alone.
God created sex. Priests created marriage.
Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
Prejudice is opinion without judgement.
All sects are different, because they come from men morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.
It is new fancy rathert than taste which produces so many new fashions.
Since the whole affair had become one of religion, the vanquished were of course exterminated.
Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.
It is forbidden to kill therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.
I was never ruined but twice: once when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I won one.
To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.
Judge of a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics... We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer.
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one part of the citizens to give to the other.
The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.
I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it.
All is for the best in the best of all possible ways.
Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less in human beings of whom they know nothing.
God is always on the side of the big battalions.
We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.
Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.
The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman nor an Empire.
The art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of the citizens to give to the other.
Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.
...the safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.
Common sense is not so common.
When it is a question of money, everyone is of the same religion.
Love truth, and pardon error.
Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies.
Anything too stupid to be said is sung.
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid; you must also be well-mannered.
God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.
It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is an absurd one.
A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without working at the expense of the rascals who work to live.
It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.