Voltaire Quotes - Page 10

Grid View List View
Quote of the DayPicture QuotesTop 100 Inspirational QuotesTop 100 Love QuotesTop 100 Happiness Quotes
George OrwellChanakyaDolly PartonStephen HawkingSocratesMother TeresaAbraham LincolnPope John Paul IiDr. SeussCarrie Fisher
IndependenceGreatTechnologyFunnyLearningBestAloneSadHistoryUnconditional Love

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

Adultery is an evil only inasmuch as it is a theft; but we do not steal that which is given to us.

The only reward to be expected from literature is contempt if one fails and hatred if one succeeds.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

If we would destroy the Christian religion, we must first of all destroy man's belief in the Bible.

Shakespeare is a drunken savage with some imagination whose plays please only in London and Canada.

I would rather obey a fine lion, much stronger than myself, than two hundred rats of my own species.

Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because there is nothing to be gained by him.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

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

The Jews are of all peoples the grosses, the most ferocious, the most fanatical, and the most absurd.

It would be easier to subjugate the entire universe through force than the minds of a single village.

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

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

Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Luxury has been railed at for two thousand years, in verse and in prose, and it has always been loved.

Let all the laws be clear, uniform and precise for interpreting laws is almost always to corrupt them.

It is not a mistress I have lost but half of myself, a soul for which my soul seems to have been made.

No one is ignorant that our character and turn of mind are intimately connected with the water-closet.

The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

You have no control over the hand that life deals you, but how you play that hand is entirely up to you.

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

Meslier was the most singular phenomenon ever seen among all the meteors fatal to the Christian religion.

The man who, in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week.

Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.

Twenty-volume folios will never make a revolution. It’s the little pocket pamphlets that are to be feared.

Pleasure has its time; so too, has wisdom. Make love in thy youth, and in old age attend to thy salvation.

Who are you, Nature? I live in you; for fifty years I have been seeking you, and I have not found you yet.

Virtue between men is a commerce of good actions: he who has no part in this commerce must not be reckoned.

The monster, fanaticism, still exists, and whoever seeks after truth will run the risk of being persecuted.

If we do not exert the right of eating our neighbor, it is because we have other means of making good cheer

History contains little beyond a list of people who have accommodate themselves with other people's property.

The abuse of grace is affectation, as the abuse of the sublime is absurdity; all perfection is nearly a fault.

Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.

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

Whosoever does not know how to recognize the faults of great men is incapable of estimating their perfections.

Hope should no more be a virtue than fear; we fear and we hope, according to what is promised or threatened us.

History is but the record of crimes and misfortunes. L'histoire n'est que le tableau des crimes et des malheurs

To a toad what is beauty? A female with two lovely pop-eyes, a wide mouth, yellow belly, and green spotted back.

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

I envy animals for two things - their ignorance of evil to come, and their ignorance of what is said about them.

Men are in general so tricky, so envious, and so cruel that when we find one who is only weak, we are too happy.

All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.

The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.

Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason.

Democracy is just a filler for textbooks! Do you actually believe that public opinion influences the government?

There is no such thing as an accident. What we call by that name is the effect of some cause which we do not see.

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

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.

Share This Page