These Voltaire Quotes About Love, Government, Religion will help you to improve your rational thinking.
François-Marie Arouet known by his pen name Voltaire was born on 21 November 1694 in Paris was a French writer, historian, and philosopher. He was famous at that time for his wit, his criticism of Christianity, his advocacy of freedom of speech, religion, and separation of church and state.
Voltaire’s writing style was wide as he wrote plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and scientific expositions. He was widely known as one of France’s greatest Enlightenment writers and wrote more than 20, 000 letters and 2, 000 books and pamphlets. His most known work includes the satirical novella Candide (1759) and the tragic play Zaïre. Candide was his bestselling novella and has been translated into many languages.
Voltaire was a man of reason and believed in freedom of speech. He hated superstition and the fact that people can kill each other just to defend their religious beliefs which they don’t understand.
Voltaire was twice sentenced to prison because of his attitude towards the France authorities. He returned to Paris after 25 years in February 1778 and died on 30 May 1778.
Here we are sharing a collection of Voltaire quotes for you that will broaden your horizon.
Voltaire Quotes
“I have chosen to be happy because it is good for my health.”
― Voltaire
“The greatest consolation in life is to say what one thinks.”
― Voltaire
“Being unable to make people more reasonable, I preferred to be happy away from them”
― Voltaire
“There is a wide difference between speaking to deceive, and being silent to be impenetrable.”
― Voltaire
“Answer me, you who believe that animals are only machines. Has nature arranged for this animal to have all the machinery of feelings only in order for it not to have any at all?”
― Voltaire
“To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.”
― Voltaire
“If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new.”
― Voltaire
“Men argue. Nature acts.”
― Voltaire
“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
― Voltaire
“I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.”
― Voltaire
Voltaire Quotes About Government
“Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.”
― Voltaire
“Reading nurtures the soul, and an enlightened friend brings it solace. ”
― Voltaire
“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”
― Voltaire
“When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.”
― Voltaire
“Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.”
― voltaire
“To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid – one must also be polite.”
― Voltaire
“If there’s life on other planets, then the earth is the Universe’s insane asylum.”
― Voltaire
“It is love; love, the comfort of the human species, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sentient beings, love, tender love.”
― Voltaire, Candide
“Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours. ”
― Voltaire
“One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.”
― Voltaire
Voltaire Quotes On Freedom Of Speech
“I would rather obey a fine lion, much stronger than myself, than two hundred rats of my own species.”
― Voltaire
“To hold a pen is to be at war.”
― Voltaire
“Fools admire everything in an author of reputation.”
― Voltaire, Candide
“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
“Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is.”
― Voltaire
“Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.”
― Voltaire, Candide
“Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.”
― Voltaire
“When a man is in love, jealous, and just whipped by the Inquisition, he is no longer himself.”
― Voltaire, Candide
“What can you say to a man who tells you he prefers obeying God rather than men, and that as a result he’s certain he’ll go to heaven if he cuts your throat?”
― Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary
“Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively.”
― Voltaire
Voltaire Quotes On Absurdities
“Come! Your presence will either give me life or kill me with pleasure.”
― Voltaire, Candide
“The more a man knows, the less he talks.”
― Voltaire
“Let us work without reasoning,’ said Martin; ‘it is the only way to make life endurable.”
― Voltaire, Candide
“Is politics nothing other than the art of deliberately lying?”
― Voltaire
“Injustice in the end produces independence.”
― Voltaire
“It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.”
― Voltaire
“We are rarely proud when we are alone.”
― Voltaire
“I read only to please myself, and enjoy only what suits my taste.”
― Voltaire, Candide and Other Tales
“I don’t know where I am going, but I am on my way.”
― Voltaire
“It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part.”
― Voltaire
Voltaire Quotes About Love
“God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.”
― Voltaire
“Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.”
― Voltaire
“He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.”
― Voltaire
“May God defend me from my friends: I can defend myself from my enemies. ”
― Voltaire
“One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion”
― Voltaire
“I loved him as we always love for the first time; with idolatry and wild passion.”
― Voltaire, Candide
“The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude.”
― Voltaire
“History never repeats itself. Man always does.”
― Voltaire
“Minds differ still more than faces.”
― Voltaire
“It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.”
― Voltaire
Voltaire Quotes On Religion
“The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.”
― Voltaire
“Doctors put drugs of which they know little into bodies of which they know less for diseases of which they know nothing at all.”
― Voltaire
“Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.”
― Voltaire
“She blushed and so did he. She greeted him in a faltering voice, and he spoke to her without knowing what he was saying.”
― Voltaire
“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.”
― Voltaire
“The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.”
― Voltaire
“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.”
― Voltaire
“It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.”
― Voltaire
“Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.”
― Voltaire
“Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.”
― Voltaire, Candide
Voltaire Quotes From Candide
“The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe.”
― Voltaire
“It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.”
― Voltaire
“Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.”
― Voltaire
“The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.”
― Voltaire
“No opinion is worth burning your neighbor for.”
― Voltaire
“Man is free at the instant he wants to be.”
― Voltaire
“Sensual pleasure passes and vanishes, but the friendship between us, the mutual confidence, the delight of the heart, the enchantment of the soul, these things do not perish and can never be destroyed.”
― Voltaire
“But for what purpose was the earth formed?” asked Candide. “To drive us mad,” replied Martin.”
― Voltaire, Candide
“If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?”
― Voltaire, Candide
“It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.”
― Voltaire
Best Voltaire Quotes On Friendship
“Perfect is the enemy of good.”
― Voltaire
“Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.”
― Voltaire
“The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us”
― Voltaire
“You’re a bitter man,” said Candide.
That’s because I’ve lived,” said Martin.”
― Voltaire, Candide
“Prejudices are what fools use for reason.”
― Voltaire
“We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.”
― Voltaire
“The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.”
― Voltaire
“Don’t think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money.”
― Voltaire
“The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.”
― Voltaire
“What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on…”
― Voltaire
Voltaire Quotes On Politics
“Dare to think for yourself.”
― Voltaire
“Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies.”
(Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.)”
― Voltaire
“Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.”
― Voltaire
“Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.”
― Voltaire, The Works: Voltaire
“Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”
― Voltaire
“Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.”
― Voltaire
“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
― Voltaire
“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
― Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV
“The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.”
― Voltaire
“God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.”
― Voltaire
Voltaire Philosophy Quotes
“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”
― Voltaire, Candide: or, Optimism
“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
― Voltaire
“Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.”
― Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary
“Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn’t illegal.”
― Voltaire
“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
― Voltaire
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
― Voltaire
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
― Voltaire
“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”
― Voltaire
“Love truth, but pardon error.”
― Voltaire
“Common sense is not so common.”
― Voltaire, A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary
Did you like these Voltaire Quotes?
Voltaire’s desire being as a philosopher was to change people’s way of thinking and motivate them towards freedom of speech and a free and liberal society. We hope like him, these Voltaire Quotes will make you stand for yourself and your beliefs.
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