Voltaire Quotes

Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little to cure diseases of which they know less in human beings of whom they know nothing.

Such is the feebleness of humanity, such is its perversity, that doubtless it is better for it to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without reli...

All men are by nature free; you have therefore an undoubted liberty to depart whenever you please, but will have many and great difficulties to encounter in passing the frontiers.

Come! you presence will either give me life or kill me with pleasure.

Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.

Fools admire everything in an author of reputation.

I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more s...

Business is the salt of life.

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.

It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.

If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new.

The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton...

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours kindle it at home...

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

Optimism, said Cacambo, What is that? Alas! replied Candide, It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an...

The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.