Quotes from Voltaire

Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.

Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.

An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are paying your annuities. It is the only pleasure I have left.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

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.

The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.

History is no more than the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire is neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing [superstition], and love those who love you.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

One feels like crawling on all fours after reading your work.

[Optimism] is a mania for saying things are well when one is in hell.

Work keeps us from three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty.

Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.

If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others like?

Thought depends absolutely on the stomach, but in spite of that, those who have the best stomachs are not the best thinkers.

Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

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.

What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.

God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.

The embarrassment of riches.