We’ve put together 50 Voltaire quotes that we’re sure you’ll love!
This collection boasts a complete list of quotes that will give you a deeper understanding of your day-to-day life.
From famous lines from Candide to Lettres Philosophiques, his works propagate an enlightened concept of progress and knowledge which people strived to achieve for decades.
Let’s get started.
And make sure to read these George Orwell quotes and Frederick Douglass quotes.
Best Voltaire Quotes
1. “Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.”
2. “Common sense is not so common.”
3. “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
4. “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
5. “It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
6. “Dare to think for yourself.”
7. “God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.”
8. “I don’t know where I am going, but I am on my way.”
9. “Love truth, but pardon error.”
10. “The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”
11. “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
Famous Voltaire Quotes
12. “Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
13. “Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
14. “I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life.”
15. “God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.”
16. “Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies.”
17. “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.”
18. “The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.”
19. “The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.”
20. “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
Voltaire Quotes That Are Full of Wisdom
21. “Cherish those who seek the truth, but beware of those who find it.”
22. “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.”
23. “Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.”
24. “Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.”
25. “Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”
26. “The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.”
27. “Doctors put drugs of which they know little into bodies of which they know less for diseases of which they know nothing at all.”
28. “The more a man knows, the less he talks.”
29. “What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on.”
30. “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.”
31. “Let us cultivate our garden.”
32. “No opinion is worth burning your neighbor for.”
33. “The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.”
34. “Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.”
35. “I read only to please myself, and enjoy only what suits my taste.”
More Voltaire Quotes
36. “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.”
37. “He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.”
38. “It is with books as with men: a very small number plays a great part.”
39. “One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.”
40. “Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in eternal awareness or pure consciousness without objectification—knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.”
41. “The greatest consolation in life is to say what one thinks.”
42. “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.”
43. “Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.”
44. “Reading nurtures the soul, and an enlightened friend brings it solace.”
45. “Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively.”
46. “History is the study of the world’s crime.”
47. “My soul is the mirror of the universe, and my body is its frame.”
48. “Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is.”
49. “The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.”
50. “Minds differ still more than faces.”
Which of These Quotes by Voltaire Make You Second Guess the Truths You’ve Known All Your Life?
Voltaire was known to be one of the primary figures in the Age of Enlightenment. During this time, new ideas and new perspectives were taking the world by storm.
Scientists and philosophers were teaching the world that established truths aren’t necessarily absolute truths—that one should think for himself and should challenge every idea and theory to find his own reality.
