Top 500 Voltaire Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “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

402. “The superfluous, a very necessary thing.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

404. “Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

408. “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

409. “We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.”

— Voltaire

410. “Everything can be borne except contempt.”

— Voltaire

411. “This poem will never reach its destination. On Rousseau’s Ode To Posterity.”

— Voltaire

412. “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

413. “If we do not exert the right of eating our neighbor, it is because we have other means of making good cheer.”

— Voltaire

414. “The punishment of criminals should be of use; when a man is hanged he is good for nothing.”

— Voltaire

415. “I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.”

— Voltaire

416. “The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.”

— Voltaire

417. “Come! you presence will either give me life or kill me with pleasure.”

— Voltaire

418. “It is the flash which appears, the thunderbolt will follow.”

— Voltaire

419. “It would be easier to subjugate the entire universe through force than the minds of a single village.”

— Voltaire

420. “Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.”

— Voltaire

421. “It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it’s a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.”

— Voltaire

422. “Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.”

— Voltaire

423. “I hate women because they always know where things are.”

— Voltaire

424. “The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.”

— Voltaire

425. “Hope should no more be a virtue than fear; we fear and we hope, according to what is promised or threatened us.”

— Voltaire

426. “History contains little beyond a list of people who have accommodate themselves with other people’s property.”

— Voltaire

427. “Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities.”

— Voltaire

428. “Truth is a fruit that can only be picked when it is very ripe.”

— Voltaire

429. “Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.”

— Voltaire

430. “You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.”

— Voltaire

431. “Common sense is both more rare and more desirable in leaders than mere intelligence.”

— Voltaire

432. “The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him.”

— Voltaire

433. “It is the first law of friendship that it has to be cultivated. The second is to be indulgent when the first law is neglected.”

— Voltaire

434. “We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.”

— Voltaire

435. “History is the recital of facts represented as true. Fable, on the other hand, is the recital of facts represented as fiction.”

— Voltaire

436. “The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.”

— Voltaire

437. “God has punished the knave, and the devil has drowned the rest.”

— Voltaire

438. “The spirit of property doubles a man’s strength.”

— Voltaire

439. “One always begins with the simple, then comes the complex, and by superior enlightenment one often reverts in the end to the simple. Such is the course of human intelligence.”

— Voltaire

440. “It is ourselves alone that make our days lucky or unlucky. Away, then, with a vain prejudice, the invention of the priesthood, which has been transmitted by our ancestors to an ignorant people.”

— Voltaire

441. “If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other’s throats; but if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace.”

— Voltaire

442. “Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.”

— Voltaire

443. “The necessity of saying something, the embarrassment produced by the consciousness of having nothing to say, and the desire to exhibit ability, are three things sufficient to render even a great man ridiculous.”

— Voltaire

444. “Go get yourself crucified and then rise on the third day.”

— Voltaire

445. “He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.”

— Voltaire

446. “It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.”

— Voltaire

447. “There are men who can think no deeper than a fact.”

— Voltaire

448. “To announce truths is an infallible receipt for being persecuted.”

— Voltaire

449. “Men fed upon carnage, and drinking strong drinks, have all an impoisoned and acrid blood which drives them mad in a hundred different ways.”

— Voltaire

450. “True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten oneself and others.”

— Voltaire