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Voltaire

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Love truth, but pardon error.

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.

See also:
Candide · The History of the Quakers

Quotes

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Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.
  • On parle toujours mal quand on n'a rien à dire.
    • One always speaks badly when one has nothing to say.
      • "Commentaires sur Corneille", Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire (1827)
  • L'homme doit être content, dit-on; mais de quoi?
    • Man ought to be content, it is said; but with what?
    • Pensées, Remarques, et Observations de Voltaire; ouvrage posthume (1802)
      • Posthumously published "Thoughts, remarks and observations" believed to be by Voltaire
  • Le public est une bête féroce: il faut l'enchaîner ou la fuir.
    • The public is a ferocious beast: one must chain it up or flee from it.
      • Letter to Mademoiselle Quinault, quoted in Charles Sainte-Beuve, "Lettres inédites de Voltaire," Causeries de Lundi (20 October 1856) ; an English translation can be found on this page:
  • If I had had more time, this letter would have been shorter.
    • Written by Voltaire in an over-long letter to a friend, quoted to A. P. Martinich in Philosophical Writing: An Introduction, Note to the Second Edition (1996)

1710s

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  • La vertu s'avilit à se justifier.
    • Virtue is debased by self-justification.
    • Oedipe, act II, scene IV (1718)
  • On doit des égards aux vivants; on ne doit aux morts que la vérité.
    • We should be considerate to the living; to the dead we owe only the truth.
    • Critique de l'Œdipe. Première lettre à M. de Genonville. Footnote to second edition. Tr. Harbottle and Dalbiac, Dictionary of Quotations: French and Italian, 2nd ed. (1904) p. 167. Compare: Mothe Le Vayer

1720s

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  • C'est un poids bien pesant qu'un nom trop tôt fameux.
    • Quite a heavy weight, a name too quickly famous.
      • La Henriade, song 3, l. 41 (1722)

1730s

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  • L'homme est libre au moment qu'il veut l'être.
    • Man is free at the instant he wants to be.
      • Brutus, act II, scene I (1730)
  • Les mortels sont égaux; ce n'est pas la naissance,
    C'est la seule vertu qui fait la différence.
    • All mortals are equal; it is not their birth,
      But virtue itself that makes the difference.
    • Ériphyle, Act II, scene I (1732); these lines were also later used in Voltaire's Mahomet, Act I, scene IV (1741)
    • Variant translations:
    • Men are equal; it is not birth, it is virtue alone that makes them differ.
    • Men are equal; it is not birth
      But virtue that makes the difference
  • Les anciens Romains élevaient des prodiges d'architecture pour faire combattre des bêtes.
    • The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture for wild beasts to fight in.
      • Letter addressed to "un premier commis" [name unknown] (20 June 1733), from Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire: Correspondance [Garnier frères, Paris, 1880], vol. I, letter 343 (p. 354)
  • Go into the London Stock Exchange – a more respectable place than many a court – and you will see representatives from all nations gathered together for the utility of men. Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt. Here the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist and the Anglican accepts a promise from the Quaker.
    • Letters on England, letter 6, "On the Presbyterians" as quoted in Richard H. Dees, Trust and Tolerance (London and New York: Routledge, 2004) p. 92, published first in English in 1733
  • If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two they would cut each other's throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness.
    • Letters on England, letter 6, "On the Presbyterians", trans. Leonard Tancock (Penguin Books, 1980) p. 41, published first in English in 1733
  • Ainsi, presque tout est imitation. L'idée des Lettres persanes est prise de celle de l'Espion turc. Le Boiardo a imité le Pulci, l'Arioste a imité le Boiardo. Les esprits les plus originaux empruntent les uns des autres. Michel Cervantes fait un fou de son don Quichotte; mais Roland est-il autre chose qu'un fou? Il serait difficile de décider si la chevalerie errante est plus tournée en ridicule par les peintures grotesques de Cervantes que par la féconde imagination de l'Arioste. Métastase a pris la plupart de ses opéras dans nos tragédies françaises. Plusieurs auteurs anglais nous ont copiés, et n'en ont rien dit. Il en est des livres comme du feu de nos foyers; on va prendre ce feu chez son voisin, on l'allume chez soi, on le communique à d'autres, et il appartient à tous.
    • Thus, almost everything is imitation. The idea of The Persian Letters was taken from The Turkish Spy. Boiardo imitated Pulci, Ariosto imitated Boiardo. The most original minds borrowed from one another. Miguel de Cervantes makes his Don Quixote a fool; but pray is Orlando any other? It would puzzle one to decide whether knight errantry has been made more ridiculous by the grotesque painting of Cervantes, than by the luxuriant imagination of Ariosto. Metastasio has taken the greatest part of his operas from our French tragedies. Several English writers have copied us without saying one word of the matter. It is with books as with the fire in our hearths; we go to a neighbor to get the embers and light it when we return home, pass it on to others, and it belongs to everyone
      • "Lettre XII: sur M. Pope et quelques autres poètes fameux", Lettres philosophiques (1756 edition)
      • Variants:
    • He looked on everything as imitation. The most original writers, he said, borrowed one from another. Boyardo has imitated Pulci, and Ariofio Boyardo. The instruction we find in books is like fire; we fetch it from our neighbour, kindle it as home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
      • Historical and Critical Memoirs of the Life and Writings of M. de Voltaire (1786) by Louis Mayeul Chaudon, p. 348
    • What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbors, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
      • As translated in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2008), by James Geary, p. 373
  • Où est l'amitié est la patrie.
    • Where there is friendship, there is our natural soil.
      • Letter to Nicolas-Claude Thieriot (1734)
  • Tous les genres sont bons, hors le genre ennuyeux.
    • All styles are good except the boring kind.
      • L'Enfant prodigue: comédie en vers dissillabes (1736), Preface
  • Le superflu, chose très nécessaire.
    • The superfluous, a very necessary thing.
      • Le Mondain (1736)
      • Variant translation: The superfluous is very necessary.
  • Le paradis terrestre est où je suis.
    • Paradise on earth is where I am.
      • Le Mondain (1736)
  • Tout homme sensé, tout homme de bien, doit avoir la secte chrétienne en horreur.
  • Aime la vérité, mais pardonne à l'erreur.
    • Love truth, but pardon error.
      • "Deuxième discours: de la liberté," Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme (1738)
  • Usez, n'abusez point; le sage ainsi l'ordonne.
    Je fuis également Épictète et Pétrone.
    L'abstinence ou l'excès ne fit jamais d'heureux.
    • Use, do not abuse; as the wise man commands. I flee Epictetus and Petronius alike. Neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
      • "Cinquième discours: sur la nature de plaisir", Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme (1738)
  • Le secret d'ennuyer est celui de tout dire.
    • The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.
      • "Sixième discours: sur la nature de l'homme", Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme (1738)
  • Une seule partie de la physique occupe la vie de plusieurs hommes, et les laisse souvent mourir dans l'incertitude.
    • A single part of physics occupies the lives of many men, and often leaves them dying in uncertainty.
      • "A Madame la Marquise du Châtelet, Avant-Propos", Eléments de Philosophie de Newton (1738)

1740s

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  • Ne peut-on pas remonter jusqu'à ces anciens scélérats, fondateurs illustres de la superstition et du fanatisme, qui, les premiers, ont pris le couteau sur l'autel pour faire des victimes de ceux qui refusaient d'etre leurs disciples?
    • May we not return to those scoundrels of old, the illustrious founders of superstition and fanaticism, who first took the knife from the altar to make victims of those who refused to be their disciples?
  • Mais qu'un marchand de chameaux excite une sédition dans sa bourgade; qu'associé à quelques malheureux coracites il leur persuade qu'il s'entretient avec l'ange Gabriel; qu'il se vante d'avoir été ravi au ciel, et d'y avoir reçu une partie de ce livre inintelligible qui fait frémir le sens commun à chaque page; que, pour faire respecter ce livre, il porte dans sa patrie le fer et la flamme; qu'il égorge les pères, qu'il ravisse les filles, qu'il donne aux vaincus le choix de sa religion ou de la mort, c'est assurément ce que nul homme ne peut excuser, à moins qu'il ne soit né Turc, et que la superstition n'étouffe en lui toute lumière naturelle.
    • But that a camel-merchant should stir up insurrection in his village; that in league with some miserable followers he persuades them that he talks with the angel Gabriel; that he boasts of having been carried to heaven, where he received in part this unintelligible book, each page of which makes common sense shudder; that, to pay homage to this book, he delivers his country to iron and flame; that he cuts the throats of fathers and kidnaps daughters; that he gives to the defeated the choice of his religion or death: this is assuredly nothing any man can excuse, at least if he was not born a Turk, or if superstition has not extinguished all natural light in him.
      • Referring to Muhammad, in a letter to Frederick II of Prussia (December 1740), published in Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, Vol. 7 (1869), edited by Georges Avenel, p. 105
  • Le premier qui fut roi fut un soldat heureux:
    Qui sert bien son pays n'a pas besoin d'aïeux.
    • The first who was king was a fortunate soldier:
      Who serves his country well has no need of ancestors.
      • Mérope, act I, scene III (1743). Borrowed from Lefranc de Pompignan's "Didon"
  • Les habiles tyrans ne sont jamais punis.
    • Clever tyrants are never punished.
      • Mérope, act V, scene V (1743)
  • Il vaut mieux hasarder de sauver un coupable que de condamner un innocent.
    • It is better to risk sparing a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.
      • Zadig (1747)

1750s

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  • C'est le privilège du vrai génie, et surtout du génie qui ouvre une carrière, de faire impunément de grandes fautes.
    • It is the privilege of true genius, and certainly of the genius that opens a new road, to make without punishment great mistakes.
      • "Siècle de Louis XIV", ch. 32 (1751), qtd. in Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1818), "Criticism of the Kantian philosophy"
  • The king [Frederic] has sent me some of his dirty linen to wash; I will wash yours another time.
    • Reply to General Manstein. Voltaire writes to his niece Dennis, July 24, 1752, "Voilà le roi qui m'envoie son linge à blanchir"; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
  • Qui plume a, guerre a.
    • To hold a pen is to be at war.
      • Letter to Jeanne-Grâce Bosc du Bouchet, comtesse d'Argental (4 October 1748)
      • This remark also appears in a letter to Marie-Louise Denis (22 May 1752): To hold a pen is to be at war. This world is one vast temple consecrated to discord [Qui plume a, guerre a. Ce monde est un vaste temple dédié à la discorde].
  • C'est une des superstitions de l'esprit humain d'avoir imaginé que la virginité pouvait être une vertu.
    • It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
      • Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750)
      • Note: This quotation and the three that follow directly below are from the so-called Leningrad Notebook, also known as Le Sottisier; it is one of several posthumously published notebooks of Voltaire.
  • Prier Dieu c'est se flatter qu'avec des paroles on changera toute la nature.
    • To pray to God is to flatter oneself that with words one can alter nature.
      • Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750)
  • Nous cherchons tous le bonheur, mais sans savoir où, comme les ivrognes qui cherchent leur maison, sachant confusément qu'ils en ont une.
    • We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.
      • Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750)
      • A variation on this remark can be found in the same notebook: Men who look for happiness are like drunkards who cannot find their house but know that they have one [Les hommes qui cherchent le bonheur sont comme des ivrognes qui ne peuvent trouver leur maison, mais qui savent qu'ils en ont une].
  • Si Dieu nous a faits à son image, nous le lui avons bien rendu.
    • If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.
      • Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750)
  • Il est dangereux d'avoir raison dans des choses où des hommes accrédités ont tort.
    • It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.
      • "Catalogue pour la plupart des écrivains français qui ont paru dans Le Siècle de Louis XIV, pour servir à l'histoire littéraire de ce temps," Le Siècle de Louis XIV (1752)
        • Fontenelle
      • Variant: It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
  • Un ministre est excusable du mal qu'il fait, lorsque le gouvernail de l'État est forcé dans sa main par les tempêtes; mais dans le calme il est coupable de tout le bien qu'il ne fait pas.
    • A minister of state is excusable for the harm he does when the helm of government has forced his hand in a storm; but in the calm he is guilty of all the good he does not do.
      • Le Siècle de Louis XIV, ch. VI: "État de la France jusqu'à la mort du cardinal Mazarin en 1661" (1752) Unsourced paraphrase or variant translation: Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.
  • Elle [la nation juive] ose étaler une haine irréconciliable contre toutes les nations; elle se révolte contre tous ses maîtres. Toujours superstitieuse, toujours avide du bien d'autrui, toujours barbare, rampante dans le malheur, et insolente dans la prospérité.
    • The Jewish nation dares to display an irreconcilable hatred toward all nations, and revolts against all masters; always superstitious, always greedy for the well-being enjoyed by others, always barbarous — cringing in misfortune and insolent in prosperity.
      • Essai sur les Moeurs et l'Esprit des Nations (1753), Introduction, XLII: Des Juifs depuis Saül
  • Un peuple qui trafique de ses enfants est encore plus condamnable que l'acheteur: ce négoce démontre notre supériorité; ce qui se donne un maître était né pour en avoir.
    • A people that sells its own children is more condemnable than the buyer; this commerce demonstrates our superiority; he who gives himself a master was born to have one.
      • Essai sur les Moeurs et l'Espit des Nations (1753), ch. CXCVII: Résumé de toute cette histoire jusqu'au temps où commence le beau siècle de Louis XIV
  • I have received, sir, your new book against the human species, and I thank you for it. You will please people by your manner of telling them the truth about themselves, but you will not alter them. The horrors of that human society—from which in our feebleness and ignorance we expect so many consolations—have never been painted in more striking colours: no one has ever been so witty as you are in trying to turn us into brutes: to read your book makes one long to go on all fours. Since, however, it is now some sixty years since I gave up the practice, I feel that it is unfortunately impossible for me to resume it: I leave this natural habit to those more fit for it than are you and I.
  • Ce corps qui s'appelait et qui s'appelle encore le saint empire romain n'était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire.
    • This body which called itself and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
      • Essai sur l'histoire générale et sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations, Chapter 70 (1756)
  • En aimant tant la gloire, comment pouvez-vous vous obstiner à un projet qui vous la fera perdre?
    • While loving glory so much how can you persist in a plan which will cause you to lose it?
      • Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 130 from Voltaire to Frederick II of Prussia, October 1757
  • Les opinions ont plus causé de maux sur ce petit globe que la peste et les tremblements de terre.
    • Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.
      • Letter to Élie Bertrand (5 January 1759)
  • Mari qui veut surprendre est souvent fort surpris.
    • Translation: The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.
    • La Femme Qui a Raison, Act 1, scene 2 (1759)

Candide (1759)

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Main article: Candide
  • If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?
  • Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts florish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any experienced in a town when it is under siege.
  • Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.
  • In every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.
  • "Let us work without reasoning," said Martin; "it is the only way to make life endurable."
  • 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.
  • Fools admire everything in an author of reputation.
  • "Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst!
  • "You're a bitter man," said Candide. "That's because I've lived," said Martin.
  • Let us cultivate our garden.

1760s

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There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
I always made one prayer to God, a very short one. Here it is: "O Lord, make our enemies quite ridiculous!" God granted it.
  • Il faut toujours en fait de nouvelles attendre le sacrement de la confirmation.
    • When we hear news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.
      • Letter to Charles-Augustin Ferriol, comte d'Argental (28 August 1760]])
  • Quand il s'agit d'argent, tout le monde est de la même religion.
  • Il y a des vérités qui ne sont pas pour tous les hommes et pour tous les temps.
    • There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
      • Letter to François-Joachim de Pierre, cardinal de Bernis (23 April 1764)
  • Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande.
    • Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.
  • Quoi que vous fassiez, écrasez l'infâme, et aimez qui vous aime.
    • Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you.
      • Letter to Jean le Rond d'Alembert (28 November 1762); This was written in reference to crushing superstition, and the words "écrasez l'infâme" ("Crush the Infamy") became a motto strongly identified with Voltaire.
  • La superstition est à la religion ce que l'astrologie est à l'astronomie, la fille très folle d'une mère très sage. Ces deux filles ont longtemps subjugué toute la terre.
    • Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy, the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.
      • "Whether it is useful to maintain the people in superstition," Treatise on Toleration (1763)
  • Mais, monsieur, en étant persuadés par la foi, des choses qui paraissent absurdes à notre intelligence, c'est-à-dire, en croyant ce que nous ne croyons pas, gardons-nous de faire ce sacrifice de notre raison dans la conduite de la vie. Il y a eu des gens qui ont dit autrefois: Vous croyez des choses incompréhensibles, contradictoires, impossibles, parce que nous vous l'avons ordonné; faites donc des choses injustes parce que nous vous l'ordonnons. Ces gens-là raisonnaient à merveille. Certainement qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste. Si vous n'opposez point aux ordres de croire l'impossible l'intelligence que Dieu a mise dans votre esprit, vous ne devez point opposer aux ordres de malfaire la justice que Dieu a mise dans votre coeur. Une faculté de votre âme étant une fois tyrannisée, toutes les autres facultés doivent l'être également. Et c'est là ce qui a produit tous les crimes religieux dont la terre a été inondée.
    • Once your faith, sir, persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares to be absurd, beware lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life. In days gone by, there were people who said to us: "You believe in incomprehensible, contradictory and impossible things because we have commanded you to; now then, commit unjust acts because we likewise order you to do so." Nothing could be more convincing. Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices. If you do not use the intelligence with which God endowed your mind to resist believing impossibilities, you will not be able to use the sense of injustice which God planted in your heart to resist a command to do evil. Once a single faculty of your soul has been tyrannized, all the other faculties will submit to the same fate. This has been the cause of all the religious crimes that have flooded the earth. (Translation from Norman Lewis Torrey: Les Philosophes. The Philosophers of the Enlightenment and Modern Democracy. Capricorn Books, 1961, pp. 277-8)
      • Questions sur les miracles (1765)
      • Widely used paraphrase: "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities".
      • Alternative translation: "Whoever is able to make you absurd, is able to make you unjust." (Source: Wist.info)
  • Ils ne se servent de la pensée que pour autoriser leurs injustices, et n'emploient les paroles que pour déguiser leurs pensées.
    • Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.
      • Dialogue 14, Le Chapon et la Poularde (1766); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
  • La nôtre [religion] est sans contredit la plus ridicule, la plus absurde, et la plus sanguinaire qui ait jamais infecté le monde.
    Votre Majesté rendra un service éternel au genre humain en détruisant cette infâme superstition, je ne dis pas chez la canaille, qui n'est pas digne d'être éclairée, et à laquelle tous les jougs sont propres; je dis chez les honnêtes gens, chez les hommes qui pensent, chez ceux qui veulent penser... Je ne m'afflige de toucher à la mort que par mon profond regret de ne vous pas seconder dans cette noble entreprise, la plus belle et la plus respectable qui puisse signaler l'esprit humain.
    • Ours is assuredly the most ridiculous, the most absurd and the most bloody religion which has ever infected this world.
      Your Majesty will do the human race an eternal service by extirpating this infamous superstition, I do not say among the rabble, who are not worthy of being enlightened and who are apt for every yoke; I say among honest people, among men who think, among those who wish to think. ... My one regret in dying is that I cannot aid you in this noble enterprise, the finest and most respectable which the human mind can point out.
      • Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 156 from Voltaire to Frederick II of Prussia, 5 January 1767
  • Où est le prince assez instruit pour savoir que depuis dix-sept cents ans la secte chrétienne n'a jamais fait que du mal?
    • Where is the prince sufficiently educated to know that for seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm?
      • Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 160 from Voltaire to Frederick II of Prussia, 6 April 1767
  • J'ai toujours fait une prière à Dieu, qui est fort courte. La voici: Mon Dieu, rendez nos ennemis bien ridicules! Dieu m'a exaucé.
    • I always made one prayer to God, a very short one. Here it is: "O Lord, make our enemies quite ridiculous!" God granted it.
      • Letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville (16 May 1767)
  • En effet, l'histoire n'est que le tableau des crimes et des malheurs.
  • Un bon mot ne prouve rien.
    • A witty saying proves nothing.
      • Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767): Deuxième Entretien
  • Il est bien malaisé (puisqu'il faut enfin m'expliquer) d'ôter à des insensés des chaînes qu'ils révèrent.
    • It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
      • Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767): Troisième Entretien
Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden.
  • La vie est hérissée de ces épines, et je n'y sais d'autre remède que de cultiver son jardin.
    • Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden.
      • Letter to Pierre-Joseph Luneau de Boisjermain (21 October 1769), from Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire: Correspondance [Garnier frères, Paris, 1882], vol. XIV, letter # 7692 (p. 478)
  • C'est une grande question parmi eux s'ils [les africains] sont descendus des singes ou si les singes sont venus d'eux. Nos sages ont dit que l'homme est l'image de Dieu: voilà une plaisante image de l'Être éternel qu'un nez noir épaté, avec peu ou point d'intelligence! Un temps viendra, sans doute, où ces animaux sauront bien cultiver la terre, l'embellir par des maisons et par des jardins, et connaître la route des astres il faut du temps pour tout.
    • It is a serious question among them whether they [Africans] are descended from monkeys or whether the monkeys come from them. Our wise men have said that man was created in the image of God. Now here is a lovely image of the Divine Maker: a flat and black nose with little or hardly any intelligence. A time will doubtless come when these animals will know how to cultivate the land well, beautify their houses and gardens, and know the paths of the stars: one needs time for everything.
      • Les Lettres d'Amabed (1769): Septième Lettre d'Amabed
  • On dit que Dieu est toujours pour les gros bataillons.
    • It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.
      • Letter to François-Louis-Henri Leriche (6 February 1770)
      • Note: In his Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750), Voltaire wrote: God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.
  • Toutes les histoires anciennes, comme le disait un de nos beaux esprits, ne sont que des fables convenues.
    • Ancient histories, as one of our wits has said, are but fables that have been agreed upon.

Dictionnaire philosophique portatif (1764)

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  • Books, like conversation, rarely give us any precise ideas: nothing is so common as to read and converse unprofitably. We must here repeat what Locke has so strongly urged—Define your terms.
    • "Abuse of Words" (1764)
    • Cf. Locke: "The names of simple ideas are not capable of any definition; the names of all complex ideas are. It has not, that I know, been yet observed by anybody what words are, and what are not, capable of being defined; the want whereof is (as I am apt to think) not seldom the occasion of great wrangling and obscurity in men's discourses, whilst some demand definitions of terms that cannot be defined; and others think they ought not to rest satisfied in an explication made by a more general word, and its restriction, (or to speak in terms of art, by a genus and difference), when, even after such definition, made according to rule, those who hear it have often no more a clear conception of the meaning of the word than they had before."
      • An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) Book III, chapter 4
  • La morale est la même chez tous les hommes, donc elle vient de Dieu; le culte est différent, donc il est l'ouvrage des hommes.
    • Morality is everywhere the same for all men, therefore it comes from God; sects differ, therefore they are the work of men.
      • "Atheist" (1764)
  • Tel homme qui dans un excès de mélancolie se tue aujourd'hui aimerait à vivre s'il attendait huit jours.
    • The man, who in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week.
  • Ne ressemblons-nous pas presque tous à ce vieux général de quatre-vingt-dix ans, qui, ayant rencontré de jeunes officiers qui faisaient un peu de désordre avec des filles, leur dit tout en colère: "Messieurs, est-ce là l'exemple que je vous donne?"
    • Do not most of us resemble that old general of ninety who, having come upon some young officers debauching some girls, said to them angrily: "Gentlemen, is that the example I give you?"
      • "Character" (1764)
  • Il est triste que souvent, pour être bon patriote, on soit l'ennemi du reste des hommes.
    • It is sad that often, to be a good patriot, one must be the enemy of the rest of mankind.
      • "Country"
  • Sa réputation s'affermira toujours, parce qu'on ne le lit guère.
    • His reputation will go on increasing because scarcely anyone reads him.
  • Tous les hommes seraient donc nécessairement égaux, s'ils étaient sans besoins. La misère attachée à notre espèce subordonne un homme à un autre homme: ce n'est pas l'inégalité qui est un malheur réel, c'est la dépendance.
    • All men would then be necessarily equal, if they were without needs. It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.
      • "Equality" (1764)
  • Telle est donc la condition humaine que souhaiter la grandeur de son pays, c'est souhaiter du mal à ses voisins.
    • Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.
      • "Fatherland" (1764)
  • La foi consiste à croire ce que la raison ne croit pas.
    • Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.
      • "The Flood" (1764)
  • Les hommes vertueux ont seuls des amis.
  • Voulez-vous avoir de bonnes lois; brûlez les vôtres, et faites-en de nouvelles.
    • If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones.
  • Définissez les termes, vous dis-je, ou jamais nous ne nous entendrons.
    • Define your terms, you will permit me again to say, or we shall never understand one another.
  • Le préjugé est une opinion sans jugement.
    • Prejudice is an opinion without judgement.
      • "Prejudices" (1764)
  • A testimony is sufficient when it rests on: 1st. A great number of very sensible witnesses who agree in having seen well. 2d. Who are sane, bodily and mentally. 3d. Who are impartial and disinterested. 4th. Who unanimously agree. 5th. Who solemnly certify to the fact.
  • Qu'est-ce que la tolérance? c'est l'apanage de l'humanité. Nous sommes tous pétris de faiblesses et d'erreurs; pardonnons-nous réciproquement nos sottises, c'est la première loi de la nature.
    • What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly — that is the first law of nature.
      • "Tolerance" (1764)
  • Une compagnie de graves tyrans est inaccessible à toutes les séductions.
    • A company of solemn tyrants is impervious to all seductions.
      • "Tyranny" (1764)
  • The institution of religion exists only to keep mankind in order, and to make men merit the goodness of God by their virtue. Everything in a religion which does not tend towards this goal must be considered foreign or dangerous.
  • What a pity and what a poverty of spirit, to assert that beasts are machines deprived of knowledge and sentiment, which affect all their operations in the same manner, which learn nothing, never improve, &c. [...] Some barbarians seize this dog, who so prodigiously excels man in friendship, they nail him to a table, and dissect him living, to show the mezarian veins. You discover in him all the same organs of sentiment which are in yourself. Answer me, machinist, has nature arranged all the springs of sentiment in this animal that he should not feel? Has he nerves to be incapable of suffering? Do not suppose this impertinent contradiction in nature. [...] The animal has received those of sentiment, memory, and a certain number of ideas. Who has bestowed these gifts, who has given these faculties? He who has made the herb of the field to grow, and who makes the earth gravitate towards the sun.
    • "Beasts", in A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 2, J. and H. L. Hunt, 1824, p. 9

1770s

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If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
  • Le doute n'est pas un état bien agréable, mais l'assurance est un état ridicule.
    Ce qui révolte le plus dans le Système de la nature (après la façon de faire des anguilles avec de la farine), c'est l'audace avec laquelle il décide qu'il n'y a point de Dieu , sans avoir seulement tenté d'en prouver l'impossibilité.
    • Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one. What is most repellent in the System of Nature [of d'Holbach] — after the recipe for making eels from flour — is the audacity with which it decides that there is no God, without even having tried to prove the impossibility.
      • Letter to Frederick William, Prince of Prussia (28 November 1770). English: in S. G. Tallentyre (ed.), Voltaire in His Letters (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1919) p. 232. French: Au prince royal de prusse, le 28 novembre, in M. Palissot (ed.), Oeuvres de Voltaire: Lettres Choisies du Roi de Prusse et de M. de Voltaire, vol. II (Paris: Chez Baudoiun, 1802) p. 419
  • C'est une plaisante chose que la pensée dépende absolument de l'estomac, et malgré cela les meilleurs estomacs ne soient pas les meilleurs penseurs.
    • Thought depends largely on the stomach. In spite of this, those with the best stomachs are not always the best thinkers.
      • Letter to Jean le Rond d'Alembert (20 August 1770)
  • "Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer." Mais toute la nature nous crie qu'il existe; qu'il y a une intelligence suprême, un pouvoir immense, un ordre admirable, et tout nous instruit de notre dépendance.
    • "If God did not exist, he would have to be invented." But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.
      • Voltaire quoting himself in his Letter to Prince Frederick William of Prussia (28 November 1770), translated by S.G. Tallentyre, Voltaire in His Letters (1919)
  • Tous les autres peuples ont commis des crimes, les Juifs sont les seuls qui s'en soient vantés. Ils sont tous nés avec la rage du fanatisme dans le cœur, comme les Bretons et les Germains naissent avec des cheveux blonds. Je ne serais point étonné que cette nation ne fût un jour funeste au genre humain.
    • All of the other people have committed crimes, the Jews are the only ones who have boasted about committing them. They are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and the Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the human race.
      • Lettres de Memmius a Cicéron (1771)
  • Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.
    • The best is the enemy of the good.
      • "La Bégueule" (Contes, 1772)
      • Variant translations:
        The perfect is the enemy of the good.
        The better is the enemy of the good.
      • Note: translation of earlier traditional Italian Il meglio è nemico del bene, attested since 1603: Proverbi italiani (Italian Proverbs), by Orlando Pescetti (c. 1556 – c. 1624) (p. 30, p. 45)
      • Note: Voltaire cites this saying in his poem "La Bégueule" ("The prude woman") while ascribing it to an unnamed "Italian sage"; he also gives the saying (without attribution) in Italian (Il meglio è l'inimico del bene [note spelling difference: l'inimico instead of nemico for "[the] enemy") in the article "Art Dramatique" ("Dramatic Art", 1770) in the Dictionnaire philosophique
  • C’est d’abord une remarque très-importante que Pythagore alla de Samos au Gange pour apprendre la géométrie, il y a environ deux mille cinq cents ans au moins, et plus de sept cents ans avant notre ère vulgaire, si récemment adoptée par nous. Or, certainement Pythagore n’aurait pas entrepris un si étrange voyage si la réputation de la science des brachmanes n’avait été dès longtemps établie de proche en proche en Europe, et si plusieurs voyageurs n’avaient déjà enseigné la route.
    • It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry...But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins' science not been long established in Europe.
    • Fragments historiques sur l'Inde (1773–1776), quoted in Salil Gewali, Great Minds on India (New Delhi: Penguin Random House, 2013)
  • J'aime fort la vérité, mais je n'aime point du tout le martyre.
    • I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.
      • Letter to Jean le Rond d'Alembert (8 February 1776)
  • Enfin, monsieur, je suis convaincu que tout nous vient des bords du Gange, astronomie, astrologie, métempsycose, etc.
    • I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, — astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc.
    • Lettres sur l'origine des sciences et sur celle des peuples de l'Asie adressés à M. de Voltaire par M. Bailly et précédées de quelques lettres de M. de Voltaire a l'auteur (Paris, 1777), quoted in E. F. Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture (2001), Ch. 1
  • Je meurs en adorant Dieu, en aimant mes amis, en ne haïssant pas mes ennemis et en détestant la superstition.
    • I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.
      • Déclaration de Voltaire, note to his secretary, Jean-Louis Wagnière (28 February 1778)

Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1770–1774)

[edit]
Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active force. Under coercion there is no virtue, and without virtue there is no religion. ... Even the sovereign has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, which by its nature supposes choice and liberty.
  • On en trouve [l'argent] toujours quand il s'agit d'aller faire tuer des hommes sur la frontière: il n'y en a plus quand il faut les sauver.
    • Money is always to be found when men are to be sent to the frontiers to be destroyed: when the object is to preserve them, it is no longer so.
      • "Charity" (1770)
  • La vertu suppose la liberté, comme le transport d'un fardeau suppose la force active. Dans la contrainte point de vertu, et sans vertu point de religion. Rends-moi esclave, je n'en serai pas meilleur. Le souverain même n'a aucun droit d'employer la contrainte pour amener les hommes à la religion, qui suppose essentiellement choix et liberté. Ma pensée n'est pas plus soumise à l'autorité que la maladie ou la santé.
    • Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active force. Under coercion there is no virtue, and without virtue there is no religion. Make a slave of me, and I shall be no better for it. Even the sovereign has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, which by its nature supposes choice and liberty. My thought is no more subject to authority than is sickness or health.
      • "Canon Law: Ecclesiastical Ministry" (1771)
  • Le divorce est probablement de la même date à peu près que le mariage. Je crois pourtant que le mariage est de quelques semaines plus ancien.
    • Divorce is probably of nearly the same age as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.
      • "Divorce" (1771)
  • Il faut vingt ans pour mener l'homme de l'état de plante où il est dans le ventre de sa mère, et de l'état de pur animal, qui est le partage de sa première enfance, jusqu'à celui où la maturité de la raison commence à poindre. Il a fallu trente siècles pour connaître un peu sa structure. Il faudrait l'éternité pour connaître quelque chose de son âme. Il ne faut qu'un instant pour le tuer.
    • It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.
      • "Man: General Reflection on Man" (1771)
  • En général, l'art du gouvernement consiste à prendre le plus d'argent qu'on peut à une grande partie des citoyens, pour le donner à une autre partie.
    • In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
      • "Money" (1770)
  • Rien n'est si ordinaire que d'imiter ses ennemis, et d'employer leurs armes.
    • Nothing is so common as to imitate one's enemies, and to use their weapons.
      • "Oracles" (1770)
  • L'Éternel a ses desseins de toute éternité. Si la prière est d'accord avec ses volontés immuables, il est très inutile de lui demander ce qu'il a résolu de faire. Si on le prie de faire le contraire de ce qu'il a résolu, c'est le prier d'être faible, léger, inconstant; c'est croire qu'il soit tel, c'est se moquer de lui. Ou vous lui demandez une chose juste; en ce cas il la doit, et elle se fera sans qu'on l'en prie; c'est même se défier de lui que lui faire instance ou la chose est injuste, et alors on l'outrage. Vous êtes digne ou indigne de la grâce que vous implorez: si digne, il le sait mieux que vous; si indigne, on commet un crime de plus en demandant ce qu'on ne mérite pas.
    En un mot, nous ne faisons des prières à Dieu que parce que nous l'avons fait à notre image. Nous le traitons comme un bacha, comme un sultan qu'on peut irriter ou apaiser.
    • The Eternal has his designs from all eternity. If prayer is in accord with his immutable wishes, it is quite useless to ask of him what he has resolved to do. If one prays to him to do the contrary of what he has resolved, it is praying that he be weak, frivolous, inconstant; it is believing that he is thus, it is to mock him. Either you ask him a just thing, in which case he must do it, the thing being done without your praying to him for it, and so to entreat him is then to distrust him; or the thing is unjust, and then you insult him. You are worthy or unworthy of the grace you implore: if worthy, he knows it better than you; if unworthy, you commit another crime by requesting what is undeserved.
      In a word, we only pray to God because we have made him in our image. We treat him like a pasha, like a sultan whom one may provoke or appease.
      • "Prayers" (1770)
  • Il est défendu de tuer; tout meurtrier est puni, à moins qu'il n'ait tué en grande compagnie, et au son des trompettes.
    • It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
      • "Rights" (1771)

1780s

[edit]

Dictionnaire philosophique (1785–1789)

[edit]
The Dictionnaire philosophique was a posthumously published collection of articles combining the Dictionnaire philosophique portatif (published under various editions and titles from 1764 to 1777), the Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (published from 1770 to 1774), articles written for the Encyclopédie and the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, the manuscript known as l'Opinion sur l'alphabet and a number of previously published miscellaneous articles
  • Que les supplices des criminels soient utiles. Un homme pendu n'est bon à rien, et un homme condamné aux ouvrages publics sert encore la patrie, et est une leçon vivante.
    • 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.
      • "Civil and Ecclesiastical Laws", Dictionnaire philosophique (1785-1789)
  • Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde.
    • Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.
      • "Liberty of the Press", Dictionnaire philosophique (ed. 1785-1789)
  • Toutes les sectes des philosophes ont échoué contre l'écueil du mal physique et moral. Il ne reste que d'avouer que Dieu ayant agi pour le mieux n'a pu agir mieux.
    • All philosophical sects have run aground on the reef of moral and physical ill. It only remains for us to confess that God, having acted for the best, had not been able to do better.
      • "Power, Omnipotence," Dictionnaire philosophique (ed. 1785-1789)
  • La superstition met le monde entier en flammes; la philosophie les éteint.

Attributed

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A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1902)

[edit]
Edited by J. de Finod. New York: D. Appleton and Co.
  • O Truth! pure and sacred virgin, when wilt thou be worthily revered? O Goddess who instructs us, why didst thou put thy palace in a well? When will our learned writers, alike free from bitterness and from flattery, faithfully teach us life?
    • p. 11
  • Prejudice is the reason of fools.
    • p. 18
  • Shun idleness: it is the rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.
    • p. 24
  • The Devil and Love are but one.
    • p. 25
  • All thinkers have about the same principles, and form but one republic.
    • p. 27
  • Alas! how can we always resist? The devil tempts us, and the flesh is weak.
    • p. 29
  • Use, do not abuse : neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
    • p. 34
  • Whoever is suspicious incites treason.
    • p. 37
  • God created woman only to tame man.
    • p. 41
  • Anything serves as a pretext for the wicked.
    • p. 42
  • All joys do not cause laughter; great pleasures are serious: pleasures of love do not make us laugh.
    • p. 43
  • O unfortunates who sin without pleasure! in your errors be more reasonable ; be, at least, fortunate sinners. Since you must be damned, be damned for amiable faults.
    • p. 45
  • Laws should be clear, uniform, precise : to interpret them is nearly always to corrupt them.
    • p. 46
  • Pleasure has its time; so, too, has wisdom. Make love in thy youth, and in old age, attend to thy salvation.
    • p. 50
  • I do not know in the whole history of the world a hero, a worthy man, a prophet, a true Christian, who has not been the victim of the jealous, of a scamp, or of a sinister spirit.
    • p. 52
  • We never live: we are always in expectation of living.
    • p. 55
  • A republic is not founded on virtue, but on the ambition of its citizens.
    • p. 57
  • Heaven made virtue; man, the appearance.
    • p. 61
  • Dress changes the manners.
    • p. 64
  • Virtue: a word easy to pronounce, difficult to understand.
    • p. 68
  • We can not always oblige, but we can always speak obligingly.
    • p. 69
  • The best written book is a receipt for a pottage.
    • p. 75
  • Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.
    • p. 81
  • Our country is that spot to which our heart is attached.
    • p. 84
  • It does not depend upon us to avoid poverty, but it does depend upon us to make that poverty respected.
    • p. 88
  • Labor is often the father of pleasure.
    • p. 90
  • Love is of all the passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head> the heart, and the senses.
    • p. 92
  • Superstition excites storms; philosophy appeases them.
    • p. 93
  • If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent one.
    • p. 96
  • Love is a canvas furnished by Nature, and embroidered by imagination.
    • p. 100
  • Satire lies about men of letters during their life, and eulogy after their death.
    • p. 105
  • Moderation is the pleasure of the wise.
    • p. 110
  • Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: a very stupid daughter of a very wise mother.
    • p. 111
  • One dies twice: to cease to live is nothing, but to cease to love and to be loved is an insupportable death.
    • p. 113
  • It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
    • p. 115
  • Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
    • p. 122
  • If as much care were taken to perpetuate a race of fine men as is done to prevent the mixture of ignoble blood in horses and dogs, the genealogy of every one would be written on his face and displayed in his manners.
    • p. 131
  • All the passions die with the years; self-love alone never dies.
    • p. 132
  • Poetry is the music of the soul.
    • p. 133
  • O love! only a few rays of thy sacred fire radiate in this exhausted world!
    • p. 136
  • All religions are more or less mixed with superstitions. Man is not reasonable enough to content himself with a pure and sensible religion, worthy of the Deity.
    • p. 139
  • Society depends upon women. The nations who confine them are unsociable.
    • p. 145
  • The art of praising caused the art of pleasing.
    • p. 152
  • Philosophers and men of letters have done more for mankind than Orpheus, Hercules, or Theseus; for it is more meritorious and more difficult to wean men from their prejudices than to civilize the barbarian : It is harder to correct than to instruct.
    • p. 153
  • Laws should never be in contradiction to usages; for, if the usages are good, the laws are valueless.
    • p. 155
  • Voltaire inscribed on a statue of Love: "Whoever thou art, behold thy master! He rules thee, or has ruled thee, or will rule thee!"
    • p. 159
  • Why do we dream in our sleep if we have no soul? and, if we have one, how is it that dreams are so incoherent and extravagant?
    • p. 162
  • History is only a record of crimes and misfortunes.
    • p. 170
  • All the reasoning of man is not worth one sentiment of woman.
    • p. 172
  • With the world, do not resort to injuries, but only to irony and gayety: injury revolts, while irony makes one reflect, and gayety disarms.
    • p. 180
  • In those countries where the morals are the most dissolute, the language is the most severe; as if they would replace on the lips what has deserted the heart.
    • p. 181
  • The reasonable worship of a just God who punishes and rewards, would undoubtedly contribute to the happiness of men; but when that salutary knowledge of a just God is disfigured by absurd lies and dangerous superstitions, then the remedy turns to poison.
    • p. 184
  • This world is but a lottery of goods, of ranks, of dignities, of rights.
    • p. 191
  • "Well! sage Evhemere, what have you seen in all your travels?" "Follies!"
    • p. 197
  • None have lived without shedding tears.
    • p. 207
  • It takes twenty years to bring man from the state of embryo, and from that of a mere animal, as he is in his first infancy, to the point when his reason begins to dawn. It has taken thirty centuries to know his structure; it would take eternity to know something of his soul: it takes but an instant to kill him.
    • p. 211
  • Life is long enough for him who knows how to use it. Working and thinking extend its limits.
    • p. 219
  • Stupid stoics! you want to change man, and you destroy him!
    • p. 220
  • Can we not seek the author of life but in the obscure labyrinth of theology?
    • p. 225
  • Self-love is a balloon filled with wind, from which tempests emerge when pricked.
    • p. 229
  • It is strange that thought should depend upon the stomach, and still that men with the best stomachs are not always the best thinkers.
    • p. 233
  • Jest with life: for that only is it good.
    • p. 239
  • O God, whom the world misjudges, and whom everything declares! listen to the last words that my lips pronounce! If I have wandered, it was in seeking Thy law. My heart may go astray, but it is full of Thee! I see, without alarm, eternity appear; and I can not think that a God who has given me life, that a God who has poured so many blessings on my days, will, now that my days are done, torment me for ever!
    • p. 241 (The last prayer of Voltaire)

Disputed

[edit]
  • Les médecins administrent des médicaments dont ils savent très peu, à des malades dont ils savent moins, pour guérir des maladies dont ils ne savent rien.
    • Doctors are men who prescribe medicine of which they know little, to human beings of whom they know less, to cure diseases of which they know nothing.
    • Note: This attribution to Voltaire appears in Strauss' Familiar Medical Quotations (1968), p. 394, and in publications as early as 1956 ; the quotation in French does not, however, appear to be original, and is probably a relatively modern invention, only quoted in recent (21st century) published works, which attribute it to "Voltaire" without citing any source.
  • I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.
    • As attributed in More Random Walks in Science : An Anthology (1982) by Robert L. Weber, p. 65
  • L'adjectif est l'ennemi du substantif.
    • Translation: The adjective is the enemy of the substantive.
    • Variants: The adjective is the enemy of the noun.
      • Quote attributed in Arthur Schopenhauer (translated by Mrs Rudolf Dircks), Essays of Schopenhauer (2004), Kessinger Publishing, p. 31
  • The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
    • Attributed to Voltaire in Likharev, K.K. (2021). On Government and Politics. In: Likharev, K.K. (eds) Essential Quotes for Scientists and Engineers. Springer, Cham. https://doi-org.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63332-5_18, with a footnote stating "As quoted, without a date, by Laurence J. Peter in 1977."
    • Also quoted as "The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination."

Misattributed

[edit]
  • "There is no God, but don't tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night". False quote, misattributed to Voltaire by Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
  • Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
    • Source: "Nowadays what isn't worth saying is sung" (Aujourd'hui ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d'être dit, on le chante) — Pierre de Beaumarchais, Le Barbier de Séville (1775), act I, scene II.
    • In George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman, act II, there is the following dialogue:
      TANNER: Let me remind you that Voltaire said that what was too silly to be said could be sung.
      STRAKER. It wasn't Voltaire: it was Bow Mar Shay.
      TANNER. I stand corrected: Beaumarchais of course.
    • This quote has also been attributed to Joseph Addison. In The Spectator, 21 March 1711, Addison wrote of "an establish'd Rule, which is receiv'd as such to this Day, That nothing is capable of being well set to Musick, that is not Nonsense."
  • Business is the salt of life.
    • This is a proverb which can be found in Robert Codrington's "Youth's Behaviour, Second Part" (1672) and in Thomas Fuller's "Gnomologia" (1732)
  • Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.
    • "Croyez ceux qui cherchent la vérité, doutez de ceux qui la trouvent; doutez de tout, mais ne doutez pas de vous-même" — André Gide, Ainsi soit-il; ou, Les Jeux sont faits (1952), page 174.
  • Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.
    • Garantissez-moi de mes amis, écrivait Gourville proscrit et fugitif, je saurai me défendre de mes ennemis. ("Defend me from my friends," wrote Gourville, exile and fugitive, "I can defend myself from my enemies.") — Gabriel Sénac de Meilhan, Considérations sur l'esprit et les moeurs (1788): "De L'Amitié." Sénac de Meilhan was quoting Jean Hérault, sieur de Gourville (1625 - 1703).
    • The remark has often been attributed to Voltaire and to Claude-Louis-Hector de Villars.
  • The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
    • According to The Veterinarian (Monthly Journal of Veterinary Science) for 1851, edited by Mr. Percivall, this is Ben Jonson's "satirical definition of physic".
  • God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.
    • For a discussion of this quotation, which is uncertain in origin but was quoted long before Voltaire, see the following: [dead link]
  • God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
    • "Creator — A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh." — H.L. Mencken, A Book of Burlesques‎ (1920), p. 203. and A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949), Ch. 30
  • I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
    • Variants:
      • Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.
      • I wholly disapprove of what you say—and will defend to the death your right to say it.
    • Though these words are regularly attributed to Voltaire, they were first used by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing under the pseudonym of Stephen G. Tallentyre in The Friends of Voltaire (1906), as a summation of Voltaire's beliefs on freedom of thought and expression.
    • Another possible source for the quote was proposed by Norbert Guterman, editor of "A Book of French Quotations," who noted a letter to M. le Riche (6 February 1770) in which Voltaire is quoted as saying: "Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write" ("Monsieur l'abbé, je déteste ce que vous écrivez, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez continuer à écrire"). This remark, however, does not appear in the letter.
  • Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
    • Il est encore plus facile de juger de l'esprit d'un homme par ses questions que par ses réponses. (It is easier to judge the mind of a man by his questions rather than his answers) — Pierre-Marc-Gaston, duc de Lévis (1764-1830), Maximes et réflexions sur différents sujets de morale et de politique (Paris, 1808): Maxim xviii
  • No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
  • Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.
    • Rien n'est plus contraire à la religion et au clergé qu'une tête sensée et raisonnable. — Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, Théologie portative, ou Dictionnaire abrégé de la religion chrétienne (1768): Folie
  • To determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?
  • One hundred years from my day there will not be a Bible in the earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity seeker.
    • As quoted in Hefley What's so great about the Bible (1969), p. 30
    • Variant: "Another century and there will not be a Bible on earth!"
      • George Sweeting Living in a Dying World (1972), p. 59
    • Related: "...only 50 years after his death the Geneva Bible Society used his press and house to produce stacks of Bibles."
    • According to The Open Society, Vol. 77 (Autumn 2004) Voltaire's House and The Bible Society, p. 14: "The myth seems to have originated from an 1849 Annual Report of the American Bible Society where the relevant section reads: Voltaire... predicted that in the nineteenth century the Bible would be known only as a relic of antiquity. He could say, while on this topic, that the Hotel Gibbon (so-called from that celebrated infidel) is now become the very depository of the Bible Society, and the individual who superintends the building is an agent for the sale and receipt of the books. The very ground this illustrious scoffer often paced, has now become the scene of the operation and success of an institution established for the diffusion of the very book against which his efforts were directed."
      • Sidney Collett, in The Scripture of Truth (1905), apparently misrepresents this report by stating: "Voltaire, the noted French infidel who died in 1778, said that in one hundred years from his time Christianity would be swept into history. But what has happened? Only twenty-five years after his death the [British & Foreign Bible] Society was founded. His printing press, with which he printed his infidel literature, has since been used to print copies of the Word of God; and the very house in which he lived has been stacked with Bibles of the Geneva Bible Society."
    • Regarding Bible-printing in Voltaire's homes, Theodore Besterman (former director of the "Institut et Muse Voltaire" in Geneva) stated, "None of Voltaire's homes is or ever has been connected in any way with any Bible Society. This applies to all Voltaire's homes, whether in France, Germany, Switzerland, or anywhere else". .[dubious? – discuss]
  • France is a nation with one religion and many sauces; England is a nation with many religions and only one sauce.
    • Actual source is Louis Eustache Ude (1829) The French Cook; A System of Fashionable and Economical Cookery, Adapted to the use of English Families (10th edition) p. xli (London : John Ebers)
      • It is very remarkable, that in France, where there is but one religion, the sauces are infinitely varied, whilst in England, where the different sects are innumerable, there is, we may say, but one single sauce. Melted butter, in English cookery, plays nearly the same part as the Lord Mayor's coach at civic ceremonies, calomel in modern medicine, or silver forks in the fashionable novels. Melted butter and anchovies, melted butter and capers, melted butter and parsley, melted butter and eggs, and melted butter for ever: this is a sample of the national cookery of this country.
    • Variants: Omitting the France clause; sect rather than religion; specific numbers rather than many; gravy rather than sauce; the sauce specified as melted butter; the United States rather than England.
    • Also attributed to Francesco Caracciolo [Burton Stevenson, The Home Book Of Quotations: Classical And Modern (1935) p. 316 no. 10 (New York : Dodd, Mead)]
    • Related quotes and attributions:
      • Voltaire: If there were only one religion in England... quote above
      • Giuseppe Baretti (1768) An Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy Vol. II p. 316 (London : T. Davies ; L. Davis & C. Raymer)
        • I once heard a Frenchman swear that he hated the English, parce qu'ils versent du beurre fondu sur leur veau rôti.
      • Giuseppe Baretti (1777) Discours sur Shakespeare et sur monsieur de Voltaire p. 39 (London; Paris : J. Nourse; Durand neveu)
        • N'a-t-il [sc. Voltaire] pas dit dans ses Ouvrages qu'en Angleterre il n'y a pas d'hypocrites d'aucune espèce, et qu'on verse du beurre fondu sur le Roast-Beef?
      • Elizabeth, Princess Berkeley (1826) Memoirs of the Margravine of Anspach, Formerly Lady Craven Vol. II p. 141 (Paris: A and W Galignani):
        • Barretti, who is an ingenious writer, remarks that almost every nation hates its neighbours, without knowing the reason for such hatred. I once heard a Frenchman declare, that he hated the English, parce qu'ils versent du beurre fondu sur leur veau rôti. Voltaire said of us, though he did not hate us on that account, that we had but one sauce, and that was melted butter, to every thing. How strong are prejudices!

Quotes about Voltaire

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A–L

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  • I grew bored in France -- and the main reason is that everyone here resembles Voltaire.
When Emerson wrote his Representatives of Humanity, he forgot Voltaire. He could have written an attractive chapter entitled: 'Voltaire, or the anti-poet' -- the king of nincompoops, the prince of the superficial, the anti-artist, the spokesmen of janitresses, the Father Gigogne of the editors of Siècle.
In his Lord Chesterfield's Ears, Voltaire pokes fun at that immortal soul who for nine months dwelt amidst excrement and urine. Like all idlers, Voltaire hated mystery. He might at least have detected, in this choice of dwelling-place, a grudge or satire directed by Providence against love -- and thus, in the method of procreation, a sign of Original Sin. After all we can make love only with the organs of excrement.
  • Mock on, mock on, Voltaire Rousseau;
    Mock on, mock on, 'tis all in vain!
    You throw the sand against the wind,
    And the wind blows it back again.
    • William Blake, Poems from Blake's Notebook, "Mock On" (1800-1803)
  • Voltaire, the greatest of "infidels" of the eighteenth century, used to say, that if there were no God, people would have to invent one... Voltaire becomes, toward the end of his life, Pythagorical, and concludes by saying: "I have consumed forty years of my pilgrimage . . . seeking the philosopher's stone called truth. I have consulted all the adepts of antiquity, Epicurus and Augustine, Plato and Malebranche, and I still remain in ignorance. . . . All that I have been able to obtain by comparing and combining the system of Plato, of the tutor of Alexander, Pythagoras, and the Oriental, is this: Chance is a word void of sense. The world is arranged according to mathematical laws." ("Dictionnaire philosophique, 1764")
  • Voltaire, the greatest skeptic of his day, the materialist par excellence, shared Bailly's belief. He thought it quite likely that: Long before the empires of China and India, there had been nations cultured, learned, and powerful, which a deluge of barbarians overpowered and thus replunged into their primitive state of ignorance and savagery, or what they call the state of pure nature. Lettres sur l'Atlantide, p. 15. This conjecture is but a half-guess. There were such "deluges of barbarians" in the Fifth Race. With regard to the Fourth, it was a bonâ fide deluge of water which swept it away. Neither Voltaire nor Bailly, however, knew anything of the Secret Doctrine of the East. That which with Voltaire was the shrewd conjecture of a great intellect, was with Bailly a "question of historical facts."
  • When we compare the immeasurable fame of Voltaire during the eighteenth century—a fame which at last raised him to be a genuine power—with the slight appreciation of him during the first half of the present century, there is presented a twofold problem of high interest in the history of literature and culture. We have to investigate the reason for the change, and from the stand-point of to-day to place anew on a firm footing the genuine worth and totality of the influence exerted by this extraordinary man. That his poetry is antiquated, that his theory of art is very limited, that his philosophy is shallow, that the weaknesses of his character have been published to the world, all this will not explain why most of us came to regard him as so unimportant, and with such indifference. Paradoxical as it may sound, the real cause of this may be that we are all, more or less, Voltairians—Voltairians without knowing it, and without being called such. For we are such only as regards that which was eternally true in Voltairism, and it is only (as Voltaire himself has finely remarked) the adherents of a disputed doctrine who are named after its original author. We have been so thoroughly imbued by him, that the ideal benefits for which he strove throughout a long life, with unwearied zeal, with passionate devotion, with every weapon of the intellect, above all, with his terrible mockery—that toleration, spiritual freedom, human dignity, justice, have become, as it were, an element of our natural life, like the air we breathe, on which we bestow a thought only when we are deprived of it. In one word, whatever once, as it flowed from Voltaire's pen, was the most audacious Thinking, is a common-place to-day.
    • Emil du Bois-Reymond, speech to the celebration of the 156th anniversary of the birth of Frederick the Great at the Berlin Academy of Science (January 1868), quoted in Francis Espinasse, Life of Voltaire (1892), pp. 200-201
  • Not a day goes by without our using the word optimism, coined by Voltaire against Leibniz, who had demonstrated (in spite of the Ecclesiastes and with the approval of the Church) that we live in the best of possible worlds. Voltaire, very reasonably, denied that exorbitant opinion... Leibniz could have replied that a world which has given us Voltaire has some right to be considered the best.
  • He is by his opinions, and also by his middle-class origin, the natural leader of an implacable opposition.
  • Voltaire offended, and offended grievously, by the manner in which he devoted himself to crying down the sacred things of his country, whether we regard the interests of society at large, or the interests of the particular system which he desired to establish.
    But though it would be exceedingly wrong to pass over this great and prevailing fault without severe reprobation, it would be equally unjust, nay, ungrateful, ever to forget the immense obligations under which Voltaire has laid mankind by his writings, the pleasure derived from his fancy and his wit, the amusement which his singular and original humour bestows, even the copious instruction with which his historical works are pregnant, and the vast improvement in the manner of writing history which we owe to him. Yet great as these services are—among the greatest that can be rendered by a man of letters—they are really of far inferior value to the benefits which have resulted from his long and arduous struggle against oppression, especially against tyranny in the worst form which it can assume, the persecution of opinion, the infraction of the sacred right to exercise the reason upon all subjects, unfettered by prejudice, uncontrolled by authority, whether of great names or of temporal power.
    • Lord Brougham, Lives of Men of Letters and Science, Who Flourished in the Time of George III (1845), pp. 131-132
  • That he combated many important truths which he found enveloped in a cloud of errors, and could not patiently sift, so as to separate the right from the wrong, is undeniably true; that he carried on his conflict, whether with error or with truth, in an offensive manner, and by the use of unlawful weapons, has been freely admitted. But we owe to him the habit of scrutinizing, both in sacred matters and in profane, the merits of whatever is presented for our belief, of examining boldly the foundations of received opinions, of making probability a part of the consideration in all that is related, of calling in plain reason and common sense to assist in our councils when grave matters are under discussion; nor can any one since the days of Luther be named, to whom the spirit of free inquiry, nay, the emancipation of the human mind from spiritual tyranny, owes a more lasting debt of gratitude. No one beyond the pale of the Romish church ever denies his obligation to the great Reformer, whom he thanks and all but reveres for having broken the chains of her spiritual thraldom. All his coarseness, all his low ribaldry, all that makes the reading of his works in many places disgusting, in not a few offensive to common decency, and even to the decorum proper to the handling of pious topics, all assaults upon things which should have been sacred from rude touch, as well as his adherence with unrestrained zeal to some of the most erroneous tenets of the Romish faith—all are forgiven, nay, forgotten, in contemplating the man of whom we can say "He broke our chains."
    • Lord Brougham, Lives of Men of Letters and Science, Who Flourished in the Time of George III (1845), pp. 132-133
  • It would be impossible to relate all the original remarks of Voltaire, which, when he made them, were attacked as dangerous paradoxes, and are now valued as sober truths. He was the first historian who recommended universal freedom of trade; and, although he expresses himself with great caution, still the mere announcement of the idea in a popular history, forms an epoch in the progress of the French mind. He is the originator of that important distinction between the increase of population and the increase of food, to which political economy has been greatly indebted; a principle adopted several years later by Townsend, and then used by Malthus as the basis of his celebrated work. He has, moreover, the merit of being the first who dispelled the childish admiration with which the Middle Ages had been hitherto regarded... In his works, the Middle Ages are, for the first time, represented as what they really were,—a period of ignorance, ferocity, and licentiousness; a period when injuries were unredressed, crime unpunished, and superstition unrebuked.
  • He...used ridicule, not as the test of truth, but as the scourge of folly. And with such effect was the punishment administered, that not only did the pedants and theologians of his own time wince under the lash, but even their successors feel their ears tingle when they read his biting words; and they revenge themselves by reviling the memory of that great writer, whose works are as a thorn in their side, and whose very name they hold in undisguised abhorrence... Voltaire did more than any other man to sap the foundation of ecclesiastical power, and to destroy the supremacy of classical studies.
  • The one was fire and fickleness, a child,
    Most mutable in wishes, but in mind,
    A wit as various,—gay, grave, sage, or wild,—
    Historian, bard, philosopher, combined;
    He multiplied himself among mankind,
    The Proteus of their talents: But his own
    Breathed most in ridicule,—which, as the wind,
    Blew where it listed, laying all things prone,—
    Now to o’erthrow a fool, and now to shake a throne.
  • Voltaire was the cleverest of all past and present men; but a great man is something more, and this he surely was not.
    • Thomas Carlyle, in 'Goethe', The Works of Thomas Carlyle (1824), p. 28
  • Let no man doubt but Voltaire and his disciples, like all men and all things that live and act in God's world, will one day be found to have "worked together for good." Nay that, with all his evil, he has already accomplished good, must be admitted in the soberest calculation. How much do we include in this one little word: He gave the death-stab to modern Superstition! That horrid incubus, which dwelt in darkness, shunning the light, is passing away; with all its racks, and poison-chalices, and foul sleeping-draughts, is passing away without return. It was a most weighty service.
    • Thomas Carlyle, 'Voltaire', Foreign Review, No. 6 (1829), in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Collected and Republished. Vol. I (1840), pp. 188-189
  • [W]ith my ancient weakness for romance, I drew out Zadig. Never shall I forget the effect this work produced on me. What I had been long seeking offered itself. This strange mixture of brilliant fantasy and poignant truth, this unrivalled blending of ideal creation and worldly wisdom—it all seemed to speak to my two natures. I wandered a poet in the streets of Babylon, or on the banks of the Tigris. A philosopher and a statesman, I moralized over the condition of man, and the nature of government. The style enchanted me. I delivered myself up to the full abandonment of its wild and brilliant grace.
    I devoured them all, volume after volume. Morning, and night, and noon, a volume was ever my companion. I ran to it after my meals, it reposed under my pillow. As I read, I roared, I laughed, I shouted with wonder and admiration, I trembled with indignation at the fortunes of my race, my bitter smile sympathised with the searching ridicule, and withering mockery.
    Pedants, and priests, and tyrants, the folios of dunces, the fires of inquisitors, and the dungeons of kings, and the long, dull system of imposture and misrule, that had sat like a gloating incubus on the fair neck of Nature, and all our ignorance, and all our weakness, and all our folly, and all our infinite imperfection.
  • Italy had a Renaissance, and Germany had a Reformation, but France had Voltaire; he was for his country both Renaissance and Reformation, and half the Revolution. He carried on the antiseptic scepticism of Montaigne, and the healthy earthy humor of Rabelais; he fought superstition and corruption more savagely and effectively than Luther or Erasmus, Calvin or Knox or Melanchthon; he helped to make the powder with which Mirabeau and Marat, Danton and Robespierre blew up the Old Regime... No, never has a writer had in his lifetime such influence. Despite exile, imprisonment, and the suppression of almost everyone of his books by the minions of church and state, he forged fiercely a path for his truth, until at last kings, popes and emperors catered to him, thrones trembled before him, and half the world listened to catch his every word. It was an age in which many things called for a destroyer. "Laughing lions must come," said Nietzsche; well, Voltaire came, and "annihilated with laughter." He and Rousseau were the two voices of a vast process of economic and political transition from feudal aristocracy to the rule of the middle class...He was happy in his garden, planting fruit trees which he did not expect to see flourish in his lifetime. When an admirer praised the work he had done for posterity he answered, "Yes, I have planted 4000 trees." He rejects all systems, and suspects that "every chief of a sect in philosophy has been a little of a quack." "The further I go, the more I am confirmed in the idea that systems of metaphysics are for philosophers what novels are for women." "It is only charlatans who are certain. We know nothing of first principles. It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God formed the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will. Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one."
  • Likewise, there is much truth in Voltaire's enthusiastic Orientalist assumption that unlike Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the Indian and Chinese "religions" were not based on prophetic "revelations" but on a purely human contemplation of reality.
  • Voltaire's radicalism was, in a word, modern. In a regime that was not yet modern, Voltaire was modern in his empiricism, his secularism, his humanitarianism, his hedonism.
    • Peter Gay, Voltaire's Politics: The Poet as Realist (1959), p. 337
  • Depth, genius, imagination, taste, reason, sensibility, philosophy, elevation, originality, nature, intellect, fancy, rectitude, facility, flexibility, precision, art, abundance, variety, fertility, warmth, magic, charm, grace, force, an eagle’s sweep of vision, vast understanding, rich instruction, excellent tone, urbanity, vivacity, delicacy, correctness, purity, cleanness, elegance, harmony, brilliancy, rapidity, gayety, pathos, sublimity, universality, perfection, indeed,—behold Voltaire!
    Voltaire will be always regarded as the greatest man in literature of modern times, and, perhaps, even of all times; as the most astonishing creation of the Author of nature, a creation in which he pleased himself to assemble, once, in the frail and perishable organization of a man, all the varieties of talent, all the glories of genius, all the powers of thought.
  • As he sup'd one night with Mr. Pope at Twickenham he fell into a fit of swearing and blasphemy about his constitution. Old Mrs Pope ask'd him how his constitution came to be so bad at his age: "Oh (says he) those d—d Jesuits, when I was a boy, b—gg—r'd me to such a degree that I shall never get over it as long as I live". ... This was said in English aloud before the servants.
    • Thomas Gray, quoted in André Michel Rousseau, L'Angleterre et Voltaire, Vol. I (1976), p. 113
  • Voltaire's keen laughter must be heard before Samson could strike with the headsman's axe. Yet Voltaire's laugh proved nothing; it produced only a brutal effect, just as did Samson's base axe. Voltaire could only wound the body of Christianity. All his sarcasms derived from ecclesiastical history; all his witticisms on dogma and worship, on the Bible, that most sacred book of humanity, on the Virgin Mary, that fairest flower of poetry; the whole dictionary of philosophical arrows which he discharged against the clergy and the priesthood, could only wound the mortal body of Christianity, but were powerless against its interior essence, its deeper spirit, its immortal soul.
    • Heinrich Heine, Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment (1959), Beacon Press, p. 20
  • Till Voltaire appeared, there was no nation more ignorant of its neighbours' literature than the French. He first exposed, and then corrected, this neglect in his countrymen. There is no writer to whom the authors of other nations, especially of England, are so indebted for the extension of their fame in France, and, through France, in Europe. There is no critic who has employed more time, wit, ingenuity, and diligence in promoting the literary intercourse between country and country, and in celebrating in one language the triumphs of another... Those who feel such indignation at his misrepresentations and mistakes, would find it difficult to produce a critic in any modern language, who in speaking of foreign literature is better informed or more candid than Voltaire; and they certainly never would be able to discover one, who to those qualities unites so much sagacity and liveliness. His enemies would fain persuade us that such exuberance of wit implies a want of information; but they only succeed in shewing that a want of wit by no means implies an exuberance of information.
    • Lord Holland, Some Account of the Life and Writings of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio (1806), pp. 190-192
  • To name Voltaire is to characterize the whole eighteenth century.
    • Victor Hugo, Essay: "Voltaire" (December, 1823), in Things Seen (1892) [Choses Vues], p. 302
  • Voltaire conquered; Voltaire waged the splendid kind of warfare, the war of one alone against all; that is to say, the grand warfare. The war of thought against matter, the war of reason against prejudice, the war of the just against the unjust, the war for the oppressed against the oppressor, the war of goodness, the war of kindness. He had the tenderness of a woman and the wrath of a hero. He was a great mind, and an immense heart.
    • Victor Hugo, speech to the Voltaire centenary celebration in Paris (30 May 1878), in Victor Hugo's Oration on Voltaire, Delivered at Paris, May 30th, 1878—the One Hundredth Anniversary of his Death, translated by James Parton (1883), p. 19
  • He conquered the old code and the old dogma. He conquered the feudal lord, the gothic judge, the Roman priest. He raised the populace to the dignity of people. He taught, pacificated, and civilized. He fought for Sirven and Montbailly, as for Calas and La Barre; he accepted all the menaces, all the outrages, all the persecutions, calumny, and exile. He was indefatigable and immovable. He conquered violence by a smile, despotism by sarcasm, infallibility by irony, obstinacy by perseverance, ignorance by truth.
    • Victor Hugo, speech to the Voltaire centenary celebration in Paris (30 May 1878), in Victor Hugo's Oration on Voltaire, Delivered at Paris, May 30th, 1878—the One Hundredth Anniversary of his Death, translated by James Parton (1883), p. 19
  • Jésus a pleuré, Voltaire a souri; c'est de cette larme divine et de ce sourire humain qu'est faite la douceur de la civilisation actuelle.
    • Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. Of that divine tear and that human smile is composed the sweetness of the present civilization.
    • Victor Hugo, Le centenaire de Voltaire, speech on Voltaire's centenary (30 May 1878), in Victor Hugo's Oration on Voltaire, Delivered at Paris, May 30th, 1878—the One Hundredth Anniversary of his Death, translated by James Parton (1883), p. 23
  • Voltaire was perfectly equipped for his work. A perfect master of the French language, knowing all its moods, tenses, and declinations, in fact and in feeling, playing upon it as skillfully as Paganini on his violin, finding expression for every thought and fancy, writing on the most serious subjects with the gayety of a harlequin, plucking jests from the mouth of death, graceful as the waving of willows, dealing in double meanings that covered the asp with flowers and flattery, master of satire and compliment, mingling them often in the same line, always interested himself, therefore interesting others, handling thoughts, questions, subjects, as a juggler does balls, keeping them in the air with perfect ease, dressing old words in new meanings, charming, grotesque, pathetic, mingling mirth with tears, wit with wisdom, and sometimes wickedness, logic, and laughter. With a woman's instinct knowing the sensitive nerves—just where to touch—hating arrogance of place, the stupidity of the solemn, snatching masks from priest and king, knowing the springs of action and ambition's ends, perfectly familiar with the great world, the intimate of kings and their favorites, sympathizing with the oppressed and imprisoned, with the unfortunate and poor, hating tyranny, despising superstition, and loving liberty with all his heart. Such was Voltaire, writing "Edipus" at seventeen, "Irene" at eighty-three, and crowding between these two tragedies, the accomplishment of a thousand lives.
  • That the man's aspirations were in the main noble and honourable to humanity I am sure. I am equally so that few men have exercised so great an influence upon their fellow-creatures... The wonderful old man! When he was past eighty years of age he set to work, like another Jeremy Bentham, to abolish the admission of hearsay evidence into French legal proceedings. But his great work was that by his wit and irony he broke down the principle of authority which had been so foully abused in France. Would the most strictly religious man wish to see religion as it was in France in the eighteenth century? Would the greatest stickler for authority wish to find a country governed as France was governed in the days of Voltaire?
    • Alexander A. Knox, 'About Voltaire', The Nineteenth Century, No. LXVIII (October 1882), p. 632
  • Voltaire, the sceptical genius of France in modern ages, combined, in himself, the double passion of this people at such a period—the passion of destruction, and the desire of innovation, hatred of prejudices, and love of knowledge: he was destined to be the standard-bearer of destruction; his genius, although not the most elevated, yet the most comprehensive in France, has hitherto been only judged by fanatics or his enemies. Impiety deified his very vices; superstition anathematised his very virtues; in a word, despotism, when it again seized on the reins of government in France, felt that to reinstate tyranny it would be necessary first to unseat Voltaire from his high position in the national opinion. Napoleon, during fifteen years, paid writers who degrade, vilify, and deny the genius of Voltaire; he hated his name, as might must ever hate intellect; and so long as men yet cherished the memory of Voltaire, so long he felt his position was not secure, for tyranny stands as much in need of prejudice to sustain it as falsehood of uncertainty and darkness; the restored church could no longer suffer his glory to shine with so great a lustre; she had the right to hate Voltaire, not to deny his genius.
    • Alphonse de Lamartine, History of the Girondists; or, Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution. From Unpublished Sources. Vol. I, translated by H. T. Ryde (1847), p. 152
  • If we judge of men by what they have done, then Voltaire is incontestably the greatest writer of modern Europe. No one has caused, through the powerful influence of his genius alone, and the perseverance of his will, so great a commotion in the minds of men; his pen aroused a world, and has shaken a far mightier empire than that of Charlemagne, the European empire of a theocracy. His genius was not force but light. Heaven had destined him not to destroy but to illuminate, and wherever he trod light followed him, for reason (which is light) had destined him to be first her poet, then her apostle, and lastly her idol.
    • Alphonse de Lamartine, History of the Girondists; or, Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution. From Unpublished Sources. Vol. I, translated by H. T. Ryde (1847), p. 152
  • Et si nous voulons y penser un peu, si nous nous représentons la France du roi Louis XV, avec le despotisme capricieux de son gouvernement, la cour égoïste et gaspilleuse, les grands corps, magistrature, clergé, plus soucieux de leurs privilèges que du bien général, le désordre des finances et l'absurdité oppressive du système fiscal, l'énormité scandaleuse des revenus ecclésiastiques, et la misère des curés de paroisse, le chaos des lois, l'enchevétrement et le conflit des autorités, l'intolérance qu condamnait les protestants au concubinage ou à l'hypocrisie, et qui envoyait leurs pasteurs aux galères, la multitude des privilèges et des règlements qui se tournaient en vexations et en misère pour la masse du peuple:—si nous appliquons là-dessus les réformes de Voltaire, et que nous introduisions dans cette France de l'ancien régime, qui reste catholique et monarchique, la tolérance, la liberté de la presse, l'impôt proportionnel, l'unité de législation, la réforme de la procédure criminelle, le clergé soumis et salarié, l'assistance développée, les principes de gouvernement pacifique et libéral, d'administration appliquée, honnête, et uniquement soucieuse de favoriser la prospérité publique:—alors nous comprendrons la portée de la transformation que la critique de Voltaire opérait, et combien il s'en faut qu'elle ait été négative, et timide.
  • If we pause to reflect—if we picture the France of King Louis XV, with its government's capricious despotism; its selfish, wasteful court; its great institutions—the judiciary and the clergy—more concerned with their privileges than the common good; the financial disarray and the oppressive absurdity of the tax system; the scandalous disparity between vast ecclesiastical revenues and the poverty of parish priests; the legal chaos and the tangle of conflicting authorities; the intolerance that condemned Protestants to concubinage or hypocrisy and sent their pastors to the galleys; the myriad privileges and regulations that translated into harassment and misery for the masses—if we then apply Voltaire's reforms to this picture, introducing into that ancien régime France (which remained Catholic and monarchical) tolerance, freedom of the press, proportional taxation, legal uniformity, criminal procedure reform, a salaried clergy subject to the state, expanded social welfare, and principles of peaceful, liberal governance and honest, diligent administration dedicated solely to public prosperity—then we grasp the true scope of the transformation Voltaire's critique sought to bring about, and realise just how far it was from being merely negative or timid.
  • Voltaire was at all times the unflinching opponent of persecution. No matter how powerful was the persecutor, no matter how insignificant was the victim, the same scathing eloquence was launched against the crime, and the indignation of Europe was soon concentrated upon the oppressor. The fearful storm of sarcasm and invective that avenged the murder of Calas, the magnificent dream in the Philosophical Dictionary reviewing the history of persecution from the slaughtered Canaanites to the latest victims who had perished at the stake, the indelible stigma branded upon the persecutors of every age and of every creed, all attested the intense and passionate earnestness with which Voltaire addressed himself to his task. On other subjects a jest or a caprice could often turn him aside. When attacking intolerance, he employed, indeed, every weapon, but he employed them all with the concentrated energy of a profound conviction. His success was equal to his zeal. The spirit of intolerance sank blasted beneath his genius. Wherever his influence passed, the arm of the Inquisitor was palsied, the chain of the captive riven, the prison door flung open. Beneath his withering irony persecution appeared not only criminal but loathsome, and since his time it has ever shrunk from observation, and masked its features under other names. He died, leaving a reputation that is indeed far from spotless, but having done more to destroy the greatest of human curses than any other of the sons of men.
  • Voltaire must indeed always stand out as the most truly representative figure of that portion of the eighteenth century, which preceded the Revolution, and he was not less representative in his limitations than in his qualities. In the profound insight and the power of pursuing long trains of connected thought which constitute a great philosopher; in the higher imaginative gifts of a great poet; in the moral depth, purity, and seriousness of a great character; in the strong passions and sympathies which appeal to the deepest feelings in human nature, he was very deficient, but the world never saw a man more fitted to popularise great masses of obscure knowledge, and to influence widely and variously the opinions of men. Untiring industry, an extraordinary variety of interests and aptitudes, a judgment at once sound, moderate, and independent, a rare power of seizing in every subject the essential arguments or facts, a disposition to take no old opinions on trust and to leave no new opinions unexamined, combined in him with the most extraordinary literary talent. Never, perhaps, was there an intellect at once so luminous, versatile, and flexible; which produced so much; which could deal with such a vast range of difficult subjects without being ever obscure, tangled, or dull.

M–Z

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  • He knew that he was a potentate as well as Frederic, that his European reputation, and his incomparable power of covering whatever he hated with ridicule, made him an object of dread even to the leaders of armies and the rulers of nations. In truth, of all the intellectual weapons which have ever been wielded by man, the most terrible was the mockery of Voltaire. Bigots and tyrants, who had never been moved by the wailing and cursing of millions, turned pale at his name. Principles unassailable by reason, principles which had withstood the fiercest attacks of power, the most valuable truths, the most generous sentiments, the noblest and most graceful images, the purest reputations, the most august institutions, began to look mean and loathsome as soon as that withering smile was turned upon them.
    • Thomas Babington Macaulay, 'Frederic the Great', The Edinburgh Review (April 1842), in Critical and Historical Essays, contributed to the Edinburgh Review (1852), p. 792
  • Voltaire was the very eye of modern illumination. It was he who conveyed to his generation in a multitude of forms the consciousness at once of the power and the rights of human intelligence. Another might well have said of him what he magnanimously said of his famous contemporary, Montesquieu, that humanity had lost its title-deeds, and he had recovered them. The four-score volumes which he wrote are the monument, as they were the instrument, of a new renascence. They are the fruit and representation of a spirit of encyclopedic curiosity and productiveness. Hardly a page of all these countless leaves is common form. Hardly a sentence is there which did not come forth alive from Voltaire's own mind, or which was said because some one else had said it before.
  • Voltaire was a stupendous power, not only because his expression was incomparably lucid, or even because his sight was exquisitely keen and clear, but because he saw many new things, after which the spirits of others were unconsciously groping and dumbly yearning. Nor was this all... Voltaire was ever in the front and centre of the fight. His life was not a mere chapter in a history of literature. He never counted truth a treasure to be discreetly hidden in a napkin. He made it a perpetual war-cry and emblazoned it on a banner that was many a time rent, but was never out of the field.
  • He was not only an extremely humane man; extraordinary vividness of imagination, lack of which is at the root of so much cruelty, and unparalleled sympathetic quality, thinness of which explains so much appalling indifference, animated him to a perseverance in protecting the helpless, which entitles him to a place by the side of Howard and the noblest philanthropists.
  • I must give you a piece of intelligence that you perhaps already know—namely, that the ungodly arch-villain Voltaire has died miserably like a dog—just like a brute. That is his reward!
    • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, letter to Leopold Mozart (3 July 1778), in The letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1769-1791, translated, from the collection of Ludwig Nohl, by Lady [Grace] Wallace (Oxford University Press, 1865) Vol. I, # 107 (p. 218)
  • O Voltaire! O humaneness! O nonsense! There is something about "truth", about the search for truth; and when a human being is too human about it- "il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien"- I bet he finds nothing.
  • It is impossible to believe that the reading of Voltaire's historical oeuvre was of other than vast importance to Gibbon, whenever and by what stages he carried it out. No other work, not even Montesquieu's, can have displayed the Enlightened narrative to him with such breadth and fullness, or shown how it could be constructed by means of a history of manners at once erudite and philosophical.
    • J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion. Volume Two: Narratives of Civil Government (1999), p. 156
  • I watch, for forty years, the reign of one man who is in himself the spiritual direction, not of his country, but of his age. From the corner of his chamber, he governs the kingdom of Spirits; intellects are every day regulated by his; one word written by his hand traverses Europe in a moment. Princes love, and kings fear him; they think they are not sure of their kingdom if he be not with them. Whole nations, on their side, adopt without discussion, and emulously repeat, every syllable that falls from his pen. Who exercises this incredible power, which had been nowhere seen since the middle ages? Is he another Gregory VII.? Is he a pope? No,—Voltaire.
    • Edgar Quinet, Ultramontanism, or the Roman Church and Modern Society, translated by C. Cocks (1845), p. 117
  • M. de Voltaire, who in his Essay sur I'histoire generale, has reviewed the same period, and has treated of all these subjects. This does not proceed from an inattention to the works of that extraordinary man, whose genius, no less enterprizing than universal, has attempted almost every different species of literary composition. In many of these he excels. In all, if he had left religion untouched, he is instructive and agreeable. But, as he seldom imitates the example of modern historians in citing the authors from whom they derived their information, I could not, with propriety, appeal to his authority in confirmation of any doubtful or unknown fact. I have often, however, followed him as my guide in these researches; and he has not only pointed out the facts with respect to which it was of importance to inquire, but the conclusions which it was proper to draw from them. If he had, at the same time, mentioned the books which relate these particulars, a great part of my labour would have been unnecessary, and many of his readers, who now consider him only as an entertaining and lively writer, would find that he is a learned and well-informed historian.
    • William Robertson, The History of the Reign of Emperor Charles V. With a View of the Progress of Society in Europe, from the Subversion of the Roman Empire, to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century. Vol. I (1762), p. 305
  • It's very odd, when you think of how much has been written this year about their importance in our culture, to look at what actually happened to those guys at the time. Rousseau's Confessions were not published in his lifetime nor Jacques le fataliste. Voltaire kept having to skip the country and used to say that he lived close to a frontier because that was very useful. The fact is that, at the time the Enlightenment writers were writing the works that we now think of as the bedrock of European free speech, they were persecuted, banned, reviled and accused of blasphemy. I think it would be as well for Europe to remember that.
    • Salman Rushdie 1990 interview included in Conversations with Salman Rushdie edited by Michael R. Reder (2000)
  • There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire – poison and antidote.
  • People like Voltaire or Euripides are no one's idea of profound thinkers, and yet, in scarcely more than a generation, the immortal gods succumb to their attacks as meekly as dew to the sun.
  • [Voltaire's correspondence is] the only completely satisfactory thing in the world.
    • Lytton Strachey, quoted in Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography. Volume I: The Unknown Years (1880–1910) (1967), p. 345
  • Mon cher, go to the end of your Rue de Beaune and look for the house at the corner, on the Quai where Voltaire died, at the age of 84, having conquered both the Rulers of this world, and of the next... Consider that life and take courage.
    • Lytton Strachey, quoted in Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography. Volume II: The Years of Achievement (1910–1932) (1968), p. 235
  • Voltaire's great work was to have done more than any other man on record to make the instinct of cruelty not only detestable but ludicrous; and so to accomplish what the holiest and the wisest of saints and philosophers had failed to achieve: to attack that most hideous and pernicious of human vices with a more effective weapon than preaching or denunciation: to make tyrants and torturers look not merely horrible and hateful, but pitiful and ridiculous. ‘Yes,’ Mr. Jowett said: ‘and that is the work that Carlyle would undo.’
  • Voltaire's satire and ridicule served to conceal an intense concern with the imperfections of the society in which he lived; and it is not only the mere bulk of his published work which is disconcerting. As with Bolingbroke, it is often hard to distinguish in Voltaire the propagandist and political emphasis from his serious moral convictions. Voltaire's crusade was at all times motivated by a warm heart.
    • Charles Vereker, Eighteenth-Century Optimism: A Study of the Interrelations of Moral and Social Theory in English and French Thought between 1689 and 1789 (1967), p. 119
  • Voltaire the thinker will be much modified. He will no longer be the atheist he is often thought to be, nor the destroyer. The negative aspects of his thought will no longer predominate, nor will the rational and the formal. To be sure, there will always be the common sense, the lack of exaggeration, and the commonplace, and these things will seem unattractive when compared with the eloquence and bombast of others. But there will also be the wit, the irony, and gracefulness.
    • Ira O. Wade, 'The Search for a New Voltaire: Studies in Voltaire Based upon Material Deposited at the American Philosophical Society', Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 48, No. 4 (1958), p. 110
  • Voltaire believes in the economic state and is an enthusiastic partisan of luxury because it encourages commerce and enriches the large state. He is also in favor of public works because of their widespread utility. In his opinion, the best government is the one that protects all classes. Intermediary groups defending the law insure a less arbitrary government. These are more or less the ideas of any eighteenth-century liberal and not especially significant, but in three respects, Voltaire exceeds his own modest liberalism. He believes that the whole jurisprudence needs to be reformed... He is violently opposed to all forms of oppression... Finally, he is rabidly opposed to war.
    • Ira O. Wade, Voltaire and Candide: A Study in the Fusion of History, Art, and Philosophy (1959), pp. 267-268
  • [T]he more one reads him, the more one is impressed with the coherence and consistency of his taste: the uniformity of his outlook, in spite of occasional contradictions or shifts of emphasis. His literary opinions are an almost instinctive assertion of this taste. The main criteria are always standards of style, composition, harmony, and eloquence, and the central concept is that of decorum, understood in terms of the French gentleman. Socially Voltaire was certainly the French aristocrat, in spite of his religious skepticism and his hatred of despotism and intolerance. His literary judgments are never or very rarely colored by his religious and political opinions. Athalie, a pernicious example of fanaticism, is still the "chef-d’oeuvre de l’esprit humain."
    • René Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950. The Later Eighteenth Century (1955), p. 45
  • One must have narrowly romantic taste not to appreciate the very real artistic success of some of Voltaire's tales such as l’Ingenu and Candide. And within limits even his tragedies, his burlesque poems such as La Pucelle, and many fugitive pieces show genuine power. He himself knew that he was merely a follower of the great men of the 17th century and that he could not measure up to them. That is why he held to their standards so strongly: he thought of himself as a defender of the poetic faith in an age of prose, as a representative of aristocratic civilization in the age of the rising bourgeoisie with its low "foreign" taste for the violent and the commonplace. There may be a paradox in the fact that Voltaire can be considered a forerunner of the French Revolution as well as the last outpost of the age of Louis le Grand. But it can be resolved in the unity of personality of a man who hated injustice, intolerance, obscurantism, irrationality, just as he despised what he considered the gross, the low and the violent, the absurd in taste and poetry. Religious skepticism and even political radicalism are not incompatible with literary conservatism and have never been so in history.
    • René Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism: 1750–1950. The Later Eighteenth Century (1955), p. 45
  • Of no writer can it be said with greater truth that the half is greater than the whole. His histories may still be studied as models of balanced and lucid narrative. His letters hold an honoured place even among the greatest. Above all, his fame rests securely upon his two stories, Zadig and Candide, those little masterpieces of swift irony and crystal-clear criticism which, in a hundred and fifty years, have lost not one spark of their brilliance, and which will perish only with the death of the French tongue. If we might give to Voltaire and Diderot two books apiece, and exclude the erudition which was their pride, they would stand unchallenged in their century. Candide and Zadig are still supreme, and what but they are worthy to be set on the same shelf with the Neveu de Rameau and the Paradoxe?

Quotes about Voltaireans

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  • From Kapila, the Hindu philosopher, who many centuries before Christ demurred to the claim of the mystic Yogins, that in ecstasy a man has the power of seeing Deity face to face and conversing with the " highest" beings, down to the Voltaireans of the eighteenth century, who laughed at everything that was held sacred by other people, each age had its unbelieving Thomases. p. 121

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