Top 500 Voltaire Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “All is a miracle. The stupendous order of nature, the revolution of a hundred millions of worlds around a million of stars, the activity of light, the life of all animals, all are grand and perpetual miracles.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

353. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

358. “Let all the laws be clear, uniform and precise for interpreting laws is almost always to corrupt them.”

— Voltaire

359. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

364. “One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.”

— Voltaire

365. “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

366. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

369. “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

370. “A good imitation is the most perfect originality.”

— Voltaire

371. “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

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

— Voltaire

373. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

382. “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

383. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

388. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

392. “In every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.”

— Voltaire

393. “The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.”

— Voltaire

394. “The tyranny of the many would be when one body takes over the rights of others, and then exercises its power to change the laws in its favor.”

— Voltaire

395. “It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.”

— Voltaire

396. “All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.”

— Voltaire

397. “Villains are undone by what is worst in them, heroes by what is best.”

— Voltaire

398. “Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.”

— Voltaire

399. “All men are by nature free; you have therefore an undoubted liberty to depart whenever you please, but will have many and great difficulties to encounter in passing the frontiers.”

— Voltaire

400. “Nothing could be smarter, more splendid, more brilliant, better drawn up than two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, cannons, formed a harmony such as never been heard in hell.”

— Voltaire