Top 500 Voltaire Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “One feels like crawling on all fours after reading your work.”

— Voltaire

452. “I loved him as we always love for the first time; with idolatry and wild passion.”

— Voltaire

453. “Virtue debases itself in justifying itself.”

— Voltaire

454. “History is but the record of crimes and misfortunes. L’histoire n’est que le tableau des crimes et des malheurs.”

— Voltaire

455. “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.”

— Voltaire

456. “The interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists.”

— Voltaire

457. “There are two things for which animals are to be envied: they know nothing of future evils, or of what people say about them.”

— Voltaire

458. “I am the best-natured creature in the world, and yet I have already killed three, and of these three two were priests.”

— Voltaire

459. “Needless to say since Christ’s expiation not one single Christian has been known to sin, or die.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

461. “Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.”

— Voltaire

462. “The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force.”

— Voltaire

463. “Exaggeration, the inseparable companion of greatness.”

— Voltaire

464. “All is but illusion and disaster.”

— Voltaire

465. “The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.”

— Voltaire

466. “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.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

468. “Where there is friendship, there is our natural soil.”

— Voltaire

469. “I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.”

— Voltaire

470. “The Pope is an idol whose hands are tied and whose feet are kissed.”

— Voltaire

471. “Translations increase the faults of a work and spoil its beauties.”

— Voltaire

472. “To succeed in chaining the multitude, you must seem to wear the same fetters.”

— Voltaire

473. “A fool is a person who guesses and gets it wrong, a clever man is one who guesses, regardless of time period, and gets it right.”

— Voltaire

474. “The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.”

— Voltaire

475. “It has taken seas of blood to drown the idol of despotism, but the English do not think they bought their laws too dearly.”

— Voltaire

476. “Nothing is so common as to imitate one’s enemies, and to use their weapons.”

— Voltaire

477. “Let us confess it: evil strides the world.”

— Voltaire

478. “Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.”

— Voltaire

479. “It is fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions.”

— Voltaire

480. “Luxury has been railed at for two thousand years, in verse and in prose, and it has always been loved.”

— Voltaire

481. “It was decided by the university of Coimbre that the sight of several persons being slowly burned in great ceremony is an infallible secret for preventing earthquakes.”

— Voltaire

482. “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

483. “History should be written as philosophy.”

— Voltaire

484. “For seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm.”

— Voltaire

485. “All pleasantry should be short; and it might even be as well were the serious short also.”

— Voltaire

486. “The rude beginnings of every art acquire a greater celebrity than the art in perfection; he who first played the fiddle was looked upon as a demigod.”

— Voltaire

487. “He who cannot shine by thought, seeks to bring himself into notice by a witticism.”

— Voltaire

488. “The more estimable the offender, the greater the torment.”

— Voltaire

489. “I never approved either the errors of his book, or the trivial truths he so vigorously laid down. I have, however, stoutly taken his side when absurd men have condemned him for these same truths.”

— Voltaire

490. “Men are in general so tricky, so envious, and so cruel that when we find one who is only weak, we are too happy.”

— Voltaire

491. “If there are atheists, who is to be blamed if not the mercenary tyrants of souls who, in revolting us against their swindles, compel some feeble spirits to deny the God whom these monsters dishonour?”

— Voltaire

492. “It is not enough to be exceptionally mad, licentious and fanatical in order to win a great reputation; it is still necessary to arrive on the scene at the right time.”

— Voltaire

493. “I swear that, not being able to be yours, I will belong to no one.”

— Voltaire

494. “Why, since we are always complaining of our ills, are we constantly employed in redoubling them?”

— Voltaire

495. “Feeble verses are those which sin not against rules, but against genius.”

— Voltaire

496. “Religion may be purified. This great work was begun two hundred years ago: but men can only bear light to come in upon them by degrees.”

— Voltaire

497. “A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without working at the expense of the rascals who work to live.”

— Voltaire

498. “The harmony of a concert, to which you listen with delight, must have on certain classes of minute animals the effect of terrible thunder; perhaps it kills them.”

— Voltaire

499. “Often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them. -Francois.”

— Voltaire

500. “Whosoever does not know how to recognize the faults of great men is incapable of estimating their perfections.”

— Voltaire