Voltaire Quotes

A yawn may not be polite, but at least it is an honest opinion.

Fame is a heavy burden.

The more he became truly wise, the more he distrusted everything he knew.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the morning light, for your life and strength. Give thanks for your food, and the joy of living. Tecumseh Appreciation is a wonderful thing; it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

Our character is composed of our ideas and our feelings: and, since it has been proved that we give ourselves neither feelings nor ideas, our character does not depend on us. If it did depend on us, there is nobody who would not be perfect. If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; but when one does reflect, one realizes that one is master of nothing

Translations increase the faults of a work and spoil its beauties.

We admit, in geometry, not only infinite magnitudes, that is to say, magnitudes greater than any assignable magnitude, but infinite magnitudes infinitely greater, the one than the other. This astonishes our dimension of brains, which is only about six inches long, five broad, and six in depth, in the largest heads.

If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones.

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

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

He who cannot shine by thought, seeks to bring himself into notice by a witticism.

I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley -- in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered -- or simply to sit here and do nothing?' That is a hard question,' said Candide.

One should always aim at being interesting, rather than exact.

To achieve a goal, a dream, a wish, you must plan it out for success!

War is the greatest of all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who does not color his crime with the pretext of justice.

There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics.

To really enjoy pleasures, you must know how to leave them.

He is lifeless that is faultless.

I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men that the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship towers considerably above him who imagined innate ideas.

Time is man's most precious asset. All men neglect it; all regret the loss of it; nothing can be done without it.

Man is free at the instant he wants to be.

Shun idleness. It is rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.

The mirror is a worthless invention. The only way to truly see yourself is in the reflection of someone else's eyes.

Every beauty, when out of it's place, is a beauty no longer.

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.

Everything's fine today, that is our illusion.

Earth is an insane asylum, to which the other planets deport their lunatics.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.

Being unable to make people more reasonable, I preferred to be happy away from them

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature.

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

We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation.

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

A multitude of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady.

The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.

‎Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.

Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

A good imitation is the most perfect originality

A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets people's attention.

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

Errors flies from mouth to mouth, from pen to pen, and to destroy it takes ages.

What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.

We have our arts, the ancients had theirs... We cannot raise obelisks a hundred feet high in a single piece, but our meridians are more exact.

The prudent man does himself good; the virtuous one does it to other men.

One always speaks badly when one has nothing to say.

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.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

There are two things for which animals are to be envied: they know nothing of future evils, or of what people say about them.

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

It would be very singular that all nature, all the planets, should obey eternal laws, and that there should be a little animal five feet high, who, in contempt of these laws, could act as he pleased, solely according to his caprice.

The opinion of all lawyers, the unanimous cry of the nation, and the good of the state, are in themselves a law.

Men must have somewhat altered the course of nature; for they were not born wolves, yet they have become wolves. God did not give them twenty-four-pounders or bayonets, yet they have made themselves bayonets and guns to destroy each other. In the same category I place not only bankruptcies, but the law which carries off the bankrupts’ effects, so as to defraud their creditors.

The passions are the winds which fill the sails of the vessel; they sink it at times, but without them it would be impossible to make way.

If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; but when one does reflect, one realizes that one is master of nothing.

What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly from them.

He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead.

Society therefore is an ancient as the world.