Top 500 Voltaire Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “My life’s dream has been a perpetual nightmare.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

303. “Mieux vaut un demon qu’on connait qu’un ange qu’on connait pas!”

— Voltaire

304. “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

305. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

308. “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

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

— Voltaire

Featured in: Country Quotes

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

312. “If you want to kill Christianity you must abolish Sunday.”

— Voltaire

313. “Almost all life depends on probabilities.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

315. “We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

317. “If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones.”

— Voltaire

318. “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

319. “A good cook is a certain slow poisoner, if you are not temperate.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

Featured in: Book Quotes, Reading Quotes

321. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

325. “The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

327. “Injustice in the end produces independence.”

— Voltaire

328. “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

329. “Change everything except your loves.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

332. “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

Featured in: Country Quotes

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

— Voltaire

334. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

337. “Only your friends steal your books.”

— Voltaire

Featured in: Book Quotes

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

Featured in: Country Quotes

342. “Fame is a heavy burden.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

Featured in: Book Quotes

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

350. “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