Quotes By Voltaire

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

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

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

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.

The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.

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

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

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.

Injustice in the end produces independence.

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.

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.

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

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

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

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.

All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

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.

The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

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

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.

We are rarely proud when we are alone.