Top 500 Voltaire Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “The greatest consolation in life is to say what one thinks.”

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

404. “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

405. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

408. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

413. “Everything can be borne except contempt.”

— Voltaire

414. “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

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

— Voltaire

416. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

428. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

433. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

436. “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

Featured in: Book Quotes

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

440. “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

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

441. “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

442. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

446. “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

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

— Voltaire

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

— Voltaire

Featured in: Country Quotes

449. “The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force.”

— Voltaire

450. “One feels like crawling on all fours after reading your work.”

— Voltaire

Featured in: Reading Quotes