Top 500 Voltaire Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

303. “Almost all life depends on probabilities.”

— Voltaire

304. “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

305. “Pleasure has its time; so too, has wisdom. Make love in thy youth, and in old age attend to thy salvation.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

307. “All the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

309. “What is called happiness is an abstract idea, composed of various ideas of pleasure; for he who has but a moment of pleasure is not a happy man, in like manner that a moment of grief constitutes not a miserable one.”

— Voltaire

310. “Injustice in the end produces independence.”

— Voltaire

311. “The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.”

— Voltaire

312. “The sentiment of justice is so natural, and so universally acquired by all mankind, that it seems to be independent of all law, all party, all religion.”

— Voltaire

313. “Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.”

— Voltaire

314. “A yawn may not be polite, but at least it is an honest opinion.”

— Voltaire

315. “God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions.”

— Voltaire

316. “Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.”

— Voltaire

317. “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

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

— Voltaire

319. “Change everything except your loves.”

— Voltaire

320. “Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.”

— Voltaire

321. “There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.”

— Voltaire

322. “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.”

— Voltaire

323. “Fools admire everything in an author of reputation.”

— Voltaire

324. “When truth is evident, it is impossible for parties and factions to rise. There never has been a dispute as to whether there is daylight at noon.”

— Voltaire

325. “God prefers bad verses recited with a pure heart to the finest verses chanted by the wicked.”

— Voltaire

326. “The monster, fanaticism, still exists, and whoever seeks after truth will run the risk of being persecuted.”

— Voltaire

327. “Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.”

— Voltaire

328. “Only your friends steal your books.”

— Voltaire

329. “Fame is a heavy burden.”

— Voltaire

330. “It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.”

— Voltaire

331. “The multitude of books is making us ignorant.”

— Voltaire

332. “The famous physician Dumoulin said when dying, ‘I leave two great physicians behind me, simple food and pure water.’”

— Voltaire

333. “The fate of a nation has often depended upon the good or bad digestion of a prime minister.”

— Voltaire

334. “The opinion of all lawyers, the unanimous cry of the nation, and the good of the state, are in themselves a law.”

— Voltaire

335. “All styles are good except the tiresome kind.”

— Voltaire

336. “Which is more dangerous: fanaticism or atheism? Fanaticism is certainly a thousand times more deadly; for atheism inspires no bloody passion whereas fanaticism does; atheism is opposed to crime and fanaticism causes crimes to be committed.”

— Voltaire

337. “Fanaticism, to which men are so much inclined, has always served not only to render them more brutalized but more wicked.”

— Voltaire

338. “There is only one morality, as there is only one geometry.”

— Voltaire

339. “Let us help one another to bear our burdens.”

— Voltaire

340. “I am a little deaf, a little blind, a little important and on top of this are two or three abominable infirmities, but nothing destroys my hope.”

— Voltaire

341. “As you know, the Inquisition is an admirable and wholly Christian invention to make the pope and the monks more powerful and turn a whole kingdom into hypocrites.”

— Voltaire

342. “It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.”

— Voltaire

343. “Opinion is called the queen of the world; it is so, for when reason opposes it, it is condemned to death. It must rise twenty times from its ashes to gradually drive away the usurper.”

— Voltaire

344. “The malevolence of men revealed itself to his mind in all of its ugliness.”

— Voltaire

345. “The Pride of every Jew finds cause to believe that the cause of their down fall is not their detestable politics, or ignorance of social graces, but the raft of God. They believe it took a miracle to undo them.”

— Voltaire

346. “Let us leave every man at liberty to seek into him and to lose himself in his ideas.”

— Voltaire

347. “Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.”

— Voltaire

348. “Heaven made virtue; man, the appearance.”

— Voltaire

349. “Not all citizens can be equally strong; but they can all be equally free.”

— Voltaire

350. “We offer up prayers to god only because we have made him after our own image. We treat him like a pasha, or a sultan, who is capable of being exasperated and appeased.”

— Voltaire