Quotes by Voltaire

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There is no true poetry without great wisdom.

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When an opponent's glory dares to offend you, you must retaliate by outmatching him.

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You are good for nothing if you are only good for yourself.

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The truth... a fruit that must not be picked until it is ripe.

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Love the truth, but forgive error.

"Every new desire is the beginning of a new wish, the beginning of a new madness."

"If you want to be a clever person, you have to learn how to ask cleverly, how to listen attentively, how to respond quietly, and how to stop talking when there is nothing more to say. Many stupid things are uttered by people whose only motivation is to say something original."

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It is not extraordinary insight that makes a statesman great, but his character.

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Those who can make you believe in absurd things can also make you commit cruelties.

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In history, coincidences can open strange doors to the future. And if such a door opens, you must enter it.

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It is a dangerous thing when a person is right about something that the official bodies are wrong about.

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Everyone can judge who we appear to be, but no one can judge what we really are.

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It is not love that should be painted as blind, but self-righteousness.

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Why is there no marriage in paradise? Because there is no paradise in marriage either.

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You can't look for love, you can only meet love.

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War, after a few years, is as unfortunate for the victors as for the vanquished.

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Inner, secret sorrows are much, much more painful than shared miseries.

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Love is the fabric of nature on which the imagination embroiders.

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It would be strange that while the whole of nature, every planet, obeys eternal laws, there should be a small, five-foot-tall animal that could disregard these laws and act as it pleased, following only its own whims.

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Very few people read Newton, since his understanding presupposes learned men. Everyone is talking about him.

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Newton's philosophy has, until the present moment, seemed to many people as incomprehensible as that of the ancient philosophers; but the obscurity of the Greeks arose from the fact that there was no light in them, but the darkness of Newton comes from his light being far from our eyes.

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Mental sayings are mostly repetitions.

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All the reasoning of men is no match for a single emotion of a woman.

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Yes, I saw Paris too; he got something of each; it's chaos, a dense multitude, where every single person is only looking for their pleasure, and where no one can find it, at least that's how I saw it.

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Plato said a long time ago that the best stomach is not the one that vomits all the food.

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Hope never hurts.

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- Do you think (...) that people have always killed each other like they do today? That they have always been liars, rascals, cheats, ungrateful, robbers, weak, unstable, cowards, envious, gluttons, drunkards, misers, ambitious, bloodthirsty, slanderers, debauchers, blind, hypocrites and fools? - What do you think (...), did crows always eat pigeons if they could catch one? - Of course, for sure (...). - Well then (...), if carvalves always had the same nature, why do you think that humans changed theirs?

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The one who is haunted by delusions and visions, the one who feels the dreams as reality, is the fan. He who feeds his madness by killing is a fanatic.

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Man is either born to the eternal torment of restlessness or to the lethargy of boredom.

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All is well, all is well, all is as good as it can be in this best world.

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- What was the world created from? - So that we have something to complain about.

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One cannot desire what one does not know.

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Tears are the silent language of pain.

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Divorce is an institution that is only a few weeks younger than marriage.

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Work (...) is good for keeping three big troubles away from us: boredom, sin, need.

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God is a comedian who plays to an audience that is afraid to laugh.

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Women are jealous of men even when they are not in love with him.

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After I was unable to make people more reasonable in order to prosper, I withdrew from them.

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Religion was born when the first cheater met the first fool.

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It is better to let a guilty man escape than to convict an innocent man.

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Most people are not smart enough or stupid enough to be happy.

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I wanted to burn myself a hundred times, but I loved life. This strange weakness is perhaps our saddest inclination: for is there anything more foolish than to carry a burden that we could throw away at any moment; we are horrified by our existence, and yet we cling to existence; in a word, are we caressing the snake that keeps biting us until one fine day it eats our hearts?

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There is nothing more beautiful on this earth than pre-determined harmony, nor the concept of enthusiastic material and saturation.

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Fools admire everything about a well-known author. I read to myself; I like what's for me.

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Ask the male toad what he thinks is beautiful, he will say the female toad.

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Even the most beautiful thought loses its value if it is foolishly expressed, and it creates boredom if it is repeated.

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It is no more surprising to be born twice than once; all resurrections in nature.

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Our fate is terror, according to all views, and there is nothing we can believe for sure, And it is a shame to ask nature, it is silent: there must be a God, who speaks to us sometimes.

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If God created us in His own image, we have more than repaid Him.

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I chose to be happy because it is very healthy.

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Once fanaticism has infected the brain, the disease is virtually incurable. There is no other remedy for this epidemic malaise than the spirit of philosophy, which, spreading step by step, will ultimately tame morals and prevent the conquest of evil. (...) The effect of philosophy is to calm the soul, and fanaticism is incompatible with calmness.

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Prejudice is nothing more than opinion without judgment. All over the world, children are given whatever opinions they want, before the child is able to judge.

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Muslims accuse all Christian religions of being superstitious, while others call them superstitious. Who can be a judge in this big circle? The mind itself? But since all religions claim that reason is on their side. And so force rules, and it will continue to do so until reason penetrates enough skulls and disarms force.

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- How do they worship God in Eldorado? - We don't worship him at all (...), there is nothing to ask of him, he has showered us with everything we need; we keep thanking him.

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If there were only two people in the world, how would they get along? They would help each other, hurt each other, flatter each other, shout snake and frog at each other, fight, make up; they could live neither with each other nor without each other.

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Think of yourself and leave others the right to do the same!

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If there was no God, we would have to invent one.

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The world is like an old flirtatious woman who hides her age.

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The earth is a giant theater in which the same tragedy is played out under different names.

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Society depends on women.

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I suggest you question all of your beliefs except that two times two is four.

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In every country, what counts as virtue and vice, morally good and bad, is what is useful and what is harmful for the respective society.

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Since the death of the holy virgin's son, probably not a day has passed without someone being killed in his name.

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Everyone is born with a nose and five fingers, but no one is born with the idea of ​​God.

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What is patience? Class part of humanity. We are all made up of frailties and mistakes, so let us forgive each other's follies: this is the supreme law of nature.

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My dear friend, now is not the time to make enemies.

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Do you want me to still love you? So give back the years of love, give back, if you can, the dawn in the twilight. Death greets us twice: first, when we no longer love and are no longer loved. This death is the cruelest, it is nothing if life is lost.

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The science of medicine consists in holding the patient's attention until nature cures the disease.

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All genres are good except boring.

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If you want to have fun, call the passengers, tell each of them their life story; and if there is even one among them who has not cursed his life, and who is not convinced that he is the most unlucky float in this wide world, he can throw me into the sea, and that is upside down.

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It seems (...) that people corrupted nature because they were not born wolves, and lo and behold, they became wolves. The Lord God did not give them twenty-four important cannons or bayonets, and yet they made themselves cannons and bayonets, just to destroy each other.

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Love is the sublime comforter of the human race, the exalted sustainer of the world, the joy of sensitive souls, yes, weak love.

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There is no effect without a cause (...), everything forms a single chain, and everything is in the best possible order.

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It is certain (...) and it can be shown that things cannot be otherwise, because if everything has a purpose, everything, of course, is necessarily for the best purpose. For example, our nose is there to have something to wear glasses on, and that's why we wear glasses. Apparently, our legs are meant to be put on pants, which is why we have pants. The stones were made to be beautifully carved, and of course to build castles out of them.

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Everyone dies bravely in front of many people.

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Life is like a shipwreck. But never forget to sing in the lifeboat!

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Whoever forgives the evil deed becomes an accomplice.

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In the first half of our lives we sacrifice our health to get money, in the second half we sacrifice our money to get our health back. And in the meantime, health deteriorates and life falls by the wayside.

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Don't let perfection work against good.

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Do good and you won't need ancestors.

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We have to admit - that evil exists. Its origin is still quite mysterious. Could evil come from the author of good?... But how can it be imagined that God himself is the one who, on the one hand, showers his sons with grace, and crushes evil with his other hand? What eye can see into the depths of such secrets? Bad creation cannot come from a perfect being, but not from anywhere else - because everything came from it. And yet there is - oh pain - evil. How astonishing, how paradoxical!

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Probably only fools to be bound deny that the stomach was created to eat, the eye to see, the ear to hear. (...) Yes, they say, but if God visibly created something on purpose, then he had to do everything on purpose. It would be ridiculous to accept Providence in a given case and deny it in other cases. Everything that was created was foreseen and arranged by God. There is no arrangement without purpose; there is no effect without a cause; so everything is equally the result of a final cause.

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You did not give us hearts to hate, hands not to kill each other; make us mutually help each other in bearing the burdens of this bitter and short life.

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To think of the world as a prison and man in it as a criminal sentenced to death is a fanatical thought; to believe that it is a garden of desires, where all the pleasures await us - this is a sybarite's wishful thinking. To think that the earth, the man, the animal are as they should be according to the order of Providence - I think this alone is worthy of a wise man.

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Life is like the feast of Damocles, the sword is always hanging over our heads.

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Doctors prescribe drugs they know very little about to their patients, about whom they know even less, for diseases they know nothing about.

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Optimism (...) is nothing else, unfortunately (...), than the angry assertion that everything is the best when everything is the worst.