François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778,) known by his pseudonym Voltaire, was the great French philosopher who towered over the Enlightenment of the 18th century as its guiding intellectual presence. His influence continued long after his death as a defining force in the American and French Revolutions.
Voltaire was a brilliant, acerbic, and prolific polemicist. He left behind some 15 million written words in every literary form—plays, poems, novels, letters, and essays. His subjects included philosophy, science, travel, religion, and civil liberties. By the time of his death, Voltaire’s astonishing literary output and his crafty media manipulation had made him the most famous writer in the world.
Born in a prosperous middle-class Parisian family and educated by the Paris Jesuits, Voltaire was opposed to the deceit, superstition, and fanaticism he saw in the Catholic Church and argued passionately for Deism. Even today, Voltaire’s opinions on religion, tolerance, and human rights seem remarkably contemporary and stimulating.
Voltaire regularly used his works to condemn intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day. His notable works are his philosophical novels, particularly Zadig ou la Destinée (1747; Zadig, or The Book of Fate) and Candide, ou l’Optimisme (1759.) His best-known work, Candide, one of French literature’s most enduring classics, follows the adventures of a young man, Candide, and his mentor, the philosopher Pangloss. This satirical short story is an extraordinary synthesis of Voltaire’s lifelong condemnation of falsity and hypocrisy; his targets include divine providence, lousy literature, extremist religion, and the vanity of kings and politicians.
Voltaire’s scientific works include Éléments de la philosophie de Newton (1738; The Elements of Newton’s Philosophy, 1738.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Voltaire
Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.
—Voltaire
Life resembles the banquet of Damocles; the sword is ever suspended.
—Voltaire
Topics: Life
The punishment of criminals should be of use; when a man is hanged he is good for nothing.
—Voltaire
Topics: Punishment
Superstitious man is to the rogue what the slave is to the tyrant
—Voltaire
All the makers of dictionaries, and all compilers who do nothing else than repeat backwards and forwards the opinions, the errors, the impostures, and the truths already printed, we may term plagiarists; but they are honest plagiarists, who do not arrogate the merit of invention.—Call them, if you please, book-makers, not authors; rather second hand dealers than plagiarists.
—Voltaire
Topics: Plagiarism
Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world. If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities. Superstition, born of paganism and adopted by Judaism, invested the Christian Church from earliest times. All the fathers of the Church, without exception, believed in the power of magic. The Church always condemned magic, but she always believed in it: she did not excommunicate sorcerers as madmen who were mistaken, but as men who were really in communication with the devil. Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.
—Voltaire
Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
—Voltaire
Topics: Appreciation
Weakness on both sides, is, as we know, the trait of all quarrels.
—Voltaire
What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.
—Voltaire
Topics: Virtue, Age
My life is a battle.
—Voltaire
Topics: Life, Nature
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.
—Voltaire
Topics: God, One liners, Atheism, Religion
The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force.
—Voltaire
Topics: Liberty, Freedom, Independence
Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is.
—Voltaire
Topics: Teach, Soul, Philosophy
Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
—Voltaire
Topics: Prejudice, Reason
My prayer to God is a very short one: “O Lord, make my enemies look ridiculous!” God has granted it.
—Voltaire
Topics: Prayer
Work banishes those three great evils: boredom, vice and poverty.
—Voltaire
Topics: Work, Boredom
In this country it’s a good thing to kill an admiral now and then to encourage the others.
—Voltaire
Topics: Navy, Army
The man visited by ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for realities is an enthusiast; the man who supports his madness with murder is a fanatic.
—Voltaire
Topics: Fanaticism
I am a little deaf, a little blind, a little impotent, and on top of this are two or three abominable infirmities, but nothing destroys my hope.
—Voltaire
Topics: Attitude, Hope
Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.
—Voltaire
Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.
—Voltaire
Topics: Divorce
Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.
—Voltaire
Topics: Doubt
Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?
—Voltaire
Topics: Role models
Fear could never make a virtue.
—Voltaire
Topics: Fear, Anxiety
No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
—Voltaire
Topics: Problems, Thinking
The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.
—Voltaire
Topics: Mistakes, Failures
Fear follows crime, and is its punishment.
—Voltaire
Topics: Fear, Crime
Common sense is not so common.
—Voltaire
Topics: Intelligence, Common Sense, Education, Common Sense
If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two, they would cut each other’s throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness.
—Voltaire
Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.
—Voltaire
Topics: Ancestors, Ancestry, Family
Ideas are like beards; men do not have them until they grow up.
—Voltaire
Topics: Ideas
Sensual pleasure passes and vanishes in the twinkling of an eye, but the friendship between us, the mutual confidence, the delights of the heart, the enchantment of the soul, these things do not perish and can never be destroyed. I shall love you until I die.
—Voltaire
A company of tyrants is inaccessible to all seductions.
—Voltaire
God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.
—Voltaire
Topics: Religion, God
Pleasure is the object, duty and the goal of all rational creatures.
—Voltaire
Topics: Happiness, Pleasure, Goals, Aspirations
If you wish to converse with me, define your terms
—Voltaire
Topics: Communication
The tolerance of all religions is a law of nature, stamped on the hearts of all men.
—Voltaire
Once the people begin to reason, all is lost
—Voltaire
Topics: Reason
The multitude are ruled by prejudices.
—Voltaire
Topics: Prejudice
Independence in the end is the fruit of injustice.
—Voltaire
Topics: Revolutions, Revolutionaries, Revolution
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