Voltaire Quotes

“The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.”

“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.”

“Only your friends steal your books.”

“Every man can educate himself. It's shameful to put one's mind into the hands of those whom you wouldn't entrust with your money. Dare to think for yourself.”

“Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities.”

“All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

“Friends should be preferred to kings.”

“No opinion is worth burning your neighbor for.”

“The darkness is at its deepest. Just before the sunrise.”

“It is with books as with the fires of our grates, everybody borrows a light from his neighbor to kindle his own, which in turn is communicated to others, and each partakes of all.”

“It is only through timidity that states are lost.”

“The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us”

“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.”

“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.”

“You write your name in the snow Yet say nothing.”

“What can I hope when all is right?”

“Ideas are like beards; men do not have them until they grow up.”

“Self love is the instrument of our preservation.”

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

“Writing is the painting of the voice.”

“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.”

“Music is the pathway to the heart.”

“In this country [England] it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others. The reference is to Admiral John Byng, who was executed in 1757 for failing to prevent the French from taking Minorca.”

“She blushed and so did he. She greeted him in a faltering voice, and he spoke to her without knowing what he was saying.”

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