Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church and Christianity as a whole, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of speech and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties, despite the risk this placed him in under the strict censorship laws of the time. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma and the French institutions of his day. May his quotes inspire you to be free so that you may live your dreams.
1. “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire
2. “Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.” Voltaire
3. “Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.” Voltaire
4. “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” Voltaire
5. “If you want to know who controls you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize.” Voltaire
6. “The more you read without thinking, the more you think you know a lot but the more you meditate, the more you see that you know very little.” Voltaire
7. “Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.” Voltaire
8. “Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part, I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.” Voltaire
9. “Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need.” Voltaire
10. “Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.” Voltaire
11. “We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies.” Voltaire
12. “Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?” Voltaire
13. “The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.” Voltaire
14. “The biggest reward for a thing well done is to have done it.” Voltaire
15. “It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” Voltaire
16. “Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively.” Voltaire
17. “Paradise is where I am.” Voltaire
18. “A long dispute means that both parties are wrong.” Voltaire
19. “The pursuit of what is true and the practice of what is good are the two most important objects of philosophy.” Voltaire
20. “When it comes to money, everybody is of the same religion.” Voltaire
21. “Injustice, in the end, produces independence.” Voltaire
22. “Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.” Voltaire
23. “Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.” Voltaire
24. “Love is the most powerful of all passions.” Voltaire
25. “I’ve decided to be happy because it is good for my health.” Voltaire
26. “It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.” Voltaire
27. “Common sense is not so common.” Voltaire
28. “Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.” Voltaire
29. “The more a man knows, the less he talks.” Voltaire
30. “God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.” Voltaire
31. “Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.” Voltaire
32. “We must cultivate our own garden.” Voltaire
33. “Life is too short, time too valuable, to spend it on what is useless.” Voltaire
34. “Love truth, but pardon error.” Voltaire
35. “Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.” Voltaire
