1. It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.

- Voltaire

2. The infinitely small have a pride infinitely great.

- Voltaire

3. It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part.

- Voltaire

4. It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.

- Voltaire

5. Man is free at the instant he wants to be.

- Voltaire

6. Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.

- Voltaire

7. No opinion is worth burning your neighbor for.

- Voltaire

8. One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

- Voltaire

9. Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies.

- Voltaire

10. God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.

- Voltaire

11. We’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good; we do the best we know.

- Voltaire

12. Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.

- Voltaire

13. Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

- Voltaire

14. I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.

- Voltaire

15. A witty saying proves nothing.

- Voltaire

16. If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

- Voltaire

17. My soul is the mirror of the universe, and my body is its frame.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

19. I hate women because they always know where things are.

- Voltaire

20. He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.

- Voltaire

21. Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.

- Voltaire

22. The more often a stupidity is repeated, the more it gets the appearance of wisdom.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

24. May God defend me from my friends: I can defend myself from my enemies.

- Voltaire

25. 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.

- Voltaire

26. Beware of the words ‘internal security,’ for they are the eternal cry of the oppressor.

- Voltaire

27. The greatest consolation in life is to say what one thinks.

- Voltaire

28. Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

30. It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

32. Men argue. Nature acts.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

34. Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

36. I hold firmly to my original views. After all I am a philosopher.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

38. I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

40. Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you.

- Voltaire

41. The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

- Voltaire

42. I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

- Voltaire

43. Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her; but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

- Voltaire

44. It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.

- Voltaire

45. We are rarely proud when we are alone.

- Voltaire

46. Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn’t illegal.

- Voltaire

47. To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

- Voltaire

48. Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.

- Voltaire

49. 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.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

51. All men are born with a nose and ten fingers, but no one was born with a knowledge of God.

- Voltaire

52. I am the best-natured creature in the world, and yet I have already killed three, and of these three two were priests.

- Voltaire

53. Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.

- Voltaire

54. Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.

- Voltaire

55. Love truth, but pardon error.

- Voltaire

56. Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.

- Voltaire

57. Doctors put drugs of which they know little into bodies of which they know less for diseases of which they know nothing at all.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

59. Injustice in the end produces independence.

- Voltaire

60. Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.

- Voltaire

61. If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other’s throats; but if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

64. Reading nurtures the soul, and an enlightened friend brings it solace.

- Voltaire

65. Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.

- Voltaire

66. I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.

- Voltaire

67. History never repeats itself. Man always does.

- Voltaire

68. No problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking.

- Voltaire

69. One always begins with the simple, then comes the complex, and by superior enlightenment one often reverts in the end to the simple. Such is the course of human intelligence.

- Voltaire

70. History is the study of the world’s crime.

- Voltaire

71. Dare to think for yourself.

- Voltaire

72. Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities.

- Voltaire

73. Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.

- Voltaire

74. What can you say to a man who tells you he prefers obeying God rather than men, and that as a result he’s certain he’ll go to heaven if he cuts your throat?

- Voltaire

75. A State can be no better than the citizens of which it is composed. Our labour now is not to mould States but make citizens.

- Voltaire

76. When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

79. Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.

- Voltaire

80. We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

- Voltaire

81. The interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

83. Is politics nothing other than the art of deliberately lying?

- Voltaire

84. Fools admire everything in an author of reputation.

- Voltaire

85. The pursuit of pleasure must be the goal of every rational person.

- Voltaire

86. One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

- Voltaire

87. In every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.

- Voltaire

88. To hold a pen is to be at war.

- Voltaire

89. Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

91. Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively.

- Voltaire

92. It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.

- Voltaire

93. 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.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

95. It is love; love, the comfort of the human species, the preserver of the universe, the soul of all sentient beings, love, tender love.

- Voltaire

96. Don’t think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money.

- Voltaire

97. Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.

- Voltaire

98. The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe.

- Voltaire

99. I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

102. If there’s life on other planets, then the earth is the Universe’s insane asylum.

- Voltaire

103. 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.

- Voltaire

104. One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

- Voltaire

105. When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

- Voltaire

106. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.

- Voltaire

107. 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.

- Voltaire

108. To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid – one must also be polite.

- Voltaire

109. Prejudices are what fools use for reason.

- Voltaire

110. 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 stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?

- Voltaire

111. A man loved by a beautiful woman will always get out of trouble.

- Voltaire

112. 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.

- Voltaire

113. Theology is to religion what poisons are to food.

- Voltaire

114. It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.

- Voltaire

115. Sensual pleasure passes and vanishes, but the friendship between us, the mutual confidence, the delight of the heart, the enchantment of the soul, these things do not perish and can never be destroyed.

- Voltaire

116. Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.

- Voltaire

117. Tears are the silent language of grief.

- Voltaire

118. It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection.

- Voltaire

119. The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.

- Voltaire

120. Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

- Voltaire

121. Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

- Voltaire

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

- Voltaire

123. Wherever my travels may lead, paradise is where I am.

- Voltaire

124. If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.

- Voltaire

125. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

- Voltaire

126. God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.

- Voltaire

127. There is a wide difference between speaking to deceive, and being silent to be impenetrable.

- Voltaire

128. All is for the best in the best of possible worlds.

- Voltaire

129. It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.

- Voltaire