Quotes from Voltaire

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

All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables that have been agreed upon.

I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.

If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.

The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.

History should be written as philosophy.

O what fine times, this age of iron!

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

History supplies little beyond a list of those who have accommodated themselves with the property of others.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

Who has not the spirit of his age,Of his age has all the unhappiness.

What would constitute useful history? That which should teach us our duties and our rights, without appearing to teach them.

The only reward to be expected from literature is contempt if one fails and hatred if one succeeds.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

"I have no more than twenty acres of ground," he replied, "the whole of which I cultivate myself with the help of my children; and our labor keeps off from us the three great evils - boredom, vice, and want."

In this country it is a good thing to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.

The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.

This is the happiest of all men, for he is superior to everything he possesses.

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other.

Common sense is not so common.

A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without working at the expense of the rascals who work to live.

All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.

Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.