Top 500 Voltaire Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

356. “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

357. “All that is very well,” answered Candide, “but let us cultivate our garden.”

— Voltaire

358. “Your destiny is that of a man, your vows those of a god.”

— Voltaire

359. “We cannot wish for that we know not.”

— Voltaire

360. “I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.”

— Voltaire

361. “It requires ages to destroy a popular opinion.”

— Voltaire

362. “I read these words which are the sum of all moral philosophy, and which cut short all the disputes of the casuists: When in doubt if an action is good or bad, refrain.”

— Voltaire

363. “Men, generally going with the stream, seldom judge for themselves, and purity of taste is almost as rare as talent.”

— Voltaire

364. “Happiness is not the portion of man.”

— Voltaire

365. “Of all religions, Christianity is without a doubt the one that should inspire tolerance most.”

— Voltaire

366. “I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.”

— Voltaire

367. “What is faith? Is it to believe that which is evident? No. It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being. This is no matter of faith, but of reason.”

— Voltaire

368. “Twenty-volume folios will never make a revolution. It’s the little pocket pamphlets that are to be feared.”

— Voltaire

369. “A torch lighted in the forests of America set all Europe in conflagration.”

— Voltaire

370. “A woman can keep one secret the secret of her age.”

— Voltaire

371. “The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.”

— Voltaire

372. “Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.”

— Voltaire

373. “He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead.”

— Voltaire

374. “Slavery is also as ancient as war, and war as human nature.”

— Voltaire

375. “If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal, nor the philosophical writings of Cicero.”

— Voltaire

376. “In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.”

— Voltaire

377. “Mortals are equal; their mask differs.”

— Voltaire

378. “Theological religion is the source of all imaginable follies and disturbances. It is the parent of fanaticism and civil discord; it is the enemy of mankind.”

— Voltaire

379. “He who is involved in ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for reality, and his own imagination for prophesy, is a fanatical novice of great hope and promise, and will soon advance to the higher stage and kill men for the love of God.”

— Voltaire

380. “Chess is a game which reflects most honor on human wit.”

— Voltaire

381. “Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.”

— Voltaire

382. “Independence in the end is the fruit of injustice.”

— Voltaire

383. “Once your faith persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares absurd, beware, lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life.”

— Voltaire

384. “Thought depends absolutely on the stomach, but in spite of that, those who have the best stomachs are not the best thinkers.”

— Voltaire

385. “When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?”

— Voltaire

386. “Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is.”

— Voltaire

387. “I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are paying your annuities. It is the only pleasure I have left.”

— Voltaire

388. “He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.”

— Voltaire

389. “I serve your Beaune to my friends, but your Volnay I keep for myself.”

— Voltaire

390. “When a man is in love, jealous, and just whipped by the Inquisition, he is no longer himself.”

— Voltaire

391. “The question of good and evil remains in irremediable chaos for those who seek to fathom it in reality. It is mere mental sport to the disputants, who are captives that play with their chains.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

393. “When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy.”

— Voltaire

394. “The greatest consolation in life is to say what one thinks.”

— Voltaire

395. “Our priests are not what a silly populace supposes; all their learning consists in our credulity.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

397. “The worthy administrators of justice are like a cat set to take care of a cheese, lest it should be gnawed by the mice. One bite of the cat does more damage to the cheese than twenty mice can do.”

— Voltaire

398. “The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

400. “To pray to God is to flatter oneself that with words one can alter nature.”

— Voltaire