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Voltaire Quotes
1694–1778 France
François-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), most famous under his pen name Voltaire, was a French writer, deist and philosopher. Voltaire established himself as one of the leading writers of the enlightenment.
France Academics Essayists Historians Memoirists Also known as: François Marie Arouet de Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet, Philosophical Dictionary
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284 quotes
There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
It is very strange that men should deny a creator and yet attribute to themselves the power of creating eels.
Dictionnaire philosophique portatif (1764)
Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.
We have never intended to enlighten shoemakers and servants—this is up to apostles.
Whoe'er thou art, thy master see;
Elements, animals, humans, everything is at war.
Poem on the Lisbon Disaster (1756)
Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.
I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, — astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc.
It is said that God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions.
In this country it is found necessary now and then to put an admiral to death in order to encourage the others.
Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.
Everything is for the best in this best of possible worlds.
If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.
Man ought to be content, it is said; but with what?
Virtue is debased by self-justification.
The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reasoning.
Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764)
Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.
The only gospel we should read is the grand book of nature, written with God’s own hand, and stamped with his own seal.
The Important Examination of Long Bolingbroke (1767)
There are two things for which animals are to be envied: they know nothing of future evils, or of what people say about them.
Letter (1739)
Slavery is also as ancient as war, and war as human nature.
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