Top 500 Voltaire Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Answer me, you who believe that animals are only machines. Has nature arranged for this animal to have all the machinery of feelings only in order for it not to have any at all?”

— Voltaire

202. “Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.”

— Voltaire

203. “The more you know, the less sure you are.”

— Voltaire

204. “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

205. “Fear follows crime and is its punishment.”

— Voltaire

206. “By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.”

— Voltaire

207. “Dogs, monkeys, and parrots are a thousand times less miserable than we are.”

— Voltaire

208. “What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity.”

— Voltaire

209. “Let us meet four times a year in a grand temple with music, and thank God for all his gifts. There is one sun. There is one God. Let us have one religion. Then all mankind will be brethren.”

— Voltaire

210. “It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.”

— Voltaire

211. “The way to become boring is to say everything.”

— Voltaire

212. “He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.”

— Voltaire

213. “We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.”

— Voltaire

214. “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

215. “The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.”

— Voltaire

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216. “I know of nothing more laughable than a doctor who does not die of old age.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

218. “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

219. “Inspiration: A peculiar effect of divine flatulence emitted by the Holy Spirit which hisses into the ears of a few chosen of God.”

— Voltaire

220. “There are no sects in geometry.”

— Voltaire

221. “Happiness is a good that nature sells us.”

— Voltaire

222. “We know that all the arts are brothers, that each of them illuminates another, and that a universal light results.”

— Voltaire

223. “No, nothing has the power to part me from you; our love is based upon virtue, and will last as long as our lives.”

— Voltaire

224. “What can we say with certainty?”

— Voltaire

225. “Shakespeare is a drunken savage with some imagination whose plays please only in London and Canada.”

— Voltaire

226. “You write your name in the snow Yet say nothing.”

— Voltaire

227. “Democracy is just a filler for textbooks! Do you actually believe that public opinion influences the government?”

— Voltaire

228. “God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.”

— Voltaire

229. “If we would destroy the Christian religion, we must first of all destroy man’s belief in the Bible.”

— Voltaire

230. “How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant hypocrite.”

— Voltaire

231. “War is the greatest of all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who does not color his crime with the pretext of justice.”

— Voltaire

232. “Whatever you do, crush the infamy.”

— Voltaire

233. “The road to the heart is the ear.”

— Voltaire

234. “Minds differ still more than faces.”

— Voltaire

235. “Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.”

— Voltaire

236. “It would be very singular that all nature, all the planets, should obey eternal laws, and that there should be a little animal five feet high, who, in contempt of these laws, could act as he pleased, solely according to his caprice.”

— Voltaire

237. “To learn who rules over you simply look to those you cannot criticize.”

— Voltaire

238. “What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly from them.”

— Voltaire

239. “In the matter of taxation, every privilege is an injustice.”

— Voltaire

240. “The Jews are of all peoples the grosses, the most ferocious, the most fanatical, and the most absurd.”

— Voltaire

241. “He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.”

— Voltaire

242. “He is lifeless that is faultless.”

— Voltaire

243. “Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.”

— Voltaire

244. “Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.”

— Voltaire

245. “Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.”

— Voltaire

246. “The pursuit of pleasure must be the goal of every rational person.”

— Voltaire

247. “History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.”

— Voltaire

248. “Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.”

— Voltaire

249. “To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.”

— Voltaire

250. “The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.”

— Voltaire