"Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason."

Voltaire on Reason
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"The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors."

Voltaire on Opinions
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"In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation."

Voltaire on News
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"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 on Multiculturalism
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"When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion."

Voltaire on Money
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"When he to whom a person speaks does not understand, and he who speaks does not understand himself, that is metaphysics."

Voltaire on Metaphysics
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"The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease."

Voltaire on Medicine
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"Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly."

Voltaire on Marriage
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"In this country it's a good thing to kill an admiral now and then to encourage the others."

Voltaire on Army and Navy
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"Originality is nothing but judicious plagiarism."

Voltaire on Originality
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"Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel."

Voltaire on Passion
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"Perfection is attained by slow degrees; she requires the hand of time."

Voltaire on Patience
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"He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked."

Voltaire on Questions
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"Judge a person by their questions, rather than their answers."

Voltaire on Questions
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"The punishment of criminals should serve a purpose. When a man is hanged he is useless."

Voltaire on Punishment
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"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking."

Voltaire on Problems
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"The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great."

Voltaire on Pride
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"Prejudices are what fools use for reason."

Voltaire on Prejudice
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"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."

Voltaire on Philosophers and Philosophy
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"The public is a ferocious beast. One must either chain it up or flee from it."

Voltaire on People
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"Weakness on both sides is, the motto of all quarrels."

Voltaire on Argument
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"Men argue, nature acts."

Voltaire on Argument
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"A long dispute means that both parties are wrong"

Voltaire on Argument
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"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."

Voltaire on Government
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"Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers."

Voltaire on Government
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"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him."

Voltaire on God
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"Do well and you will have no need for ancestors."

Voltaire on Ancestry
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"Every man is the creature of the age in which he lives; very few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time."

Voltaire on Age and Aging
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"May God defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies."

Voltaire on Friends and Friendship
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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Voltaire on Freedom of Speech
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"Liberty, then, about which so many volumes have been written is, when accurately defined, only the power of acting."

Voltaire on Freedom
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"The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination."

Voltaire on Government
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"History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead."

Voltaire on History and Historians
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"Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him."

Voltaire on Greed
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"By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property."

Voltaire on Appreciation
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"Animals have these advantages over man: They have no theologians to instruct them, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills."

Voltaire on Animals
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"We never live; we are always in the expectation of living."

Voltaire on Life and Living
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"I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms."

Voltaire on Lies and Lying
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"I was never ruined but twice; once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I won one."

Voltaire on Law and Lawyers
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"I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men that the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship towers considerably above him who imagined innate ideas."

Voltaire on Imagination
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