Voltaire
98 quotations
To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.
You must have the devil in you to succeed in the arts.
I know of nothing more laughable than a doctor who does not die of old age.
In my life, I have prayed but one prayer: oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.
All people are equal, it is not birth, it is virtue alone that makes the difference.
As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.
Exaggeration is the inseparable companion of greatness.
The best is the enemy of the good.
What a heavy burden is a name that has become famous too soon.
It is fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions.
Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.
The great consolation in life is to say what one thinks.
It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.
The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force.
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
May God defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.
Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.
God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions.
God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.
Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.
History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead.