Top 500 Voltaire Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “Every abuse ought to be reformed, unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

253. “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

254. “Faith consists in believing not what seems true, but what seems false to our understanding.”

— Voltaire

255. “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

256. “The most genuine and efficacious charity is that which greases the paws of the priests; such charity covers a multitude of sins.”

— Voltaire

257. “In all the disputes which have excited Christians against each other, Rome has invariably decided in favor of that opinion which tended most towards the suppression of the human intellect and the annihilation of the reasoning powers.”

— Voltaire

258. “If you are attacked as regards your style, never reply; it is for your work alone to make answer.”

— Voltaire

259. “What would constitute useful history? That which should teach us our duties and our rights, without appearing to teach them.”

— Voltaire

260. “Better is the Enemy of Good.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

262. “Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

264. “The adjective is the enemy of the noun. Variant: The adjective is the enemy of the substantive.”

— Voltaire

265. “Whatever you do, trample down abuses, and love those who love you. Different translation: Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing superstition, and love those who love you.”

— Voltaire

266. “It is not a mistress I have lost but half of myself, a soul for which my soul seems to have been made.”

— Voltaire

267. “The effervescence of this fresh wine reveals the true brilliance of the French people.”

— Voltaire

268. “A man loved by a beautiful woman will always get out of trouble.”

— Voltaire

269. “The Jews have always been waiting for a Messiah, but their Messiah is for them only, not for us, a Messiah ho will give them mastery over the Christians.”

— Voltaire

270. “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

271. “The first clergyman was the first rascal who met the first fool.”

— Voltaire

272. “Now is not the time for making new enemies.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

274. “To caress the serpent that devours us, until it has eaten away our heart.”

— Voltaire

275. “Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.”

— Voltaire

276. “It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.”

— Voltaire

277. “No opinion is worth burning your neighbor for.”

— Voltaire

278. “Minds differ still more than faces.”

— Voltaire

279. “Music is the pathway to the heart.”

— Voltaire

280. “England has forty-two religions and only two sauces.”

— Voltaire

281. “Beware of the words “internal security,” for they are the eternal cry of the oppressor.”

— Voltaire

282. “Once the people begin to reason, all is lost.”

— Voltaire

283. “My life’s dream has been a perpetual nightmare.”

— Voltaire

284. “All the arts are brothers; each one is a light to the others.”

— Voltaire

285. “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

286. “Know that the secret of the arts is to correct nature.”

— Voltaire

287. “We are rarely proud when we are alone.”

— Voltaire

288. “In this country we find it pays to shoot an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.”

— Voltaire

289. “To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.”

— Voltaire

290. “I know of no great men except those who have rendered great service to the human race.”

— Voltaire

291. “How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child’s board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

293. “All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.”

— Voltaire

294. “Almost all life depends on probabilities.”

— Voltaire

295. “I have a simple philosophy: Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. Scratch where it itches. Alice Roosevelt Longworth Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

298. “If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; but when one does reflect, one realizes that one is master of nothing.”

— Voltaire

299. “I hold firmly to my original views. After all I am a philosopher.”

— Voltaire

300. “Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.”

— Voltaire