Quotes from Voltaire

Music is the pathway to the heart.

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.

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.

Nature has always had more force than education.

What is toleration? It is the prerogative of humanity. We are all steeped in weaknesses and errors: Let us forgive one another's follies, it is the first law of nature.

Know that the secret of the arts is to correct nature.

The policy of man consists, at first, in endeavoring to arrive at a state equal to that of animals, whom nature has furnished with food, clothing, and shelter.

The right of commanding is no longer an advantage transmitted by nature; like an inheritance, it is the fruit of labors, the price of courage.

Men argue nature acts.

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.

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

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.

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

Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.

Superstition sets the whole world in flames, but philosophy douses them.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

History should be written as philosophy.

When one man speaks to another man who doesn't understand him, and when a man who's speaking no longer understands, it's metaphysics.

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

Pleasantry is never good on serious points, because it always regards subjects in that point of view in which it is not the purpose to consider them.

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

All the arts are brothers; each one is a light to the others.

When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy.

Why, since we are always complaining of our ills, are we constantly employed in redoubling them?