Voltaire

The writings of the egoist Voltaire did more for liberation than those of the loving Rousseau did for brotherhood. - Alexander Herzen, From the Other Shore.

It is good, from time to time, to kill an admiral, in order to encourage the others. - Voltaire, Candide, 1759.

He struggled; he called to his aid philosophy, which had always helped him; he derived from it only enlightenment and no relief. Duty, gratitude, sovereign majesty violated: these presented themselves to his eyes like avenging gods; he fought, he triumphed; but this victory, which had to be won every moment, cost him groans and tears. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

The first who was king was a successful soldier. He who serves well his country has no need of ancestors. - Voltaire, Mérope, 1743.

He admired the magnificent bridges erected over the river, the superb and convenient quays, the palaces built up right and left, an immense house where thousands of old soldiers, wounded and victorious, gave thanks each day to the God of Armies. - Voltaire, The World As It Is. 1748.

Nothing could be so beautiful, so smart, so brilliant, so well drilled as the two armies. Trumpets, fifes, oboes, drums, cannons formed a harmony such as was never heard even in hell. First the cannons felled about six thousand men on each side; then the musketry removed from the best of worlds some nine or ten thousand scoundrels who infected its surface. The bayonet also was the sufficient reason for the death of some thousands of men. - Voltaire, Candide. 1759.

Fortune... introduced them to the wife of a contractor for army hospitals, a man of great talent who could boast of having killed more soldiers in one year than canon slays in ten. - Voltaire, Jeannot & Colin. 1764.

All the arts are brothers; each one is a light to the others. - Voltaire, Note to Ode on the Death of the Princess de Bareith.

You must have the devil in you to succeed in any of the arts. - Voltaire, (quoted in Tallentyre, Life of Voltaire).

You appeared there, and they broke my chains! So there is, in beauty and virtue, an invincible charm that makes gates of iron fall and softens hearts of bronze. - Voltaire, Ingenuous. 1767.

There is nothing left for us but to sell our lives dear. - Voltaire, Candide, 1759.

There is no chance; all is test, or punishment, or reward, or foreseeing. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

He noticed in her a touch of frivolity and a strong inclination always to think that the best-looking young men were those who possessed the most intelligence and virtue. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

Strong souls have much more violent feeling than others, when they are tender. - Voltaire, Ingenuous, 1767.

The Egyptian was more robust than his adversary, Zadig was more adroit; he fought like man whose head directed his arm, and the other like a madman whose blind anger guided his movements at random. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

We shall talk, and your thinking faculty will have the pleasure of communicating with mine by means of speech, which is a marvelous thing that men do not admire enough. - Voltaire, Count Chesterfield’s Ears, 1775.

We must keep in mind that it is much easier to turn on one’s axis than to walk on one’s feet. - Voltaire, Micromegas. 1752.

Surely... men have corrupted nature a little, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves; God gave them neither twenty-four-pounder cannon nor bayonets, and they have made bayonets and cannon to destroy one another. I could put bankruptcies into account, and the justice which seizes the goods of the bankrupt to defraud their creditors of them. - Voltaire, Candide. 1759.

History is nothing more than the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes. - Voltaire, Ingenuous. 1767.

Let the law never be contradictory to custom: for if the custom be good, the law is worthless. - Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary, 1764.

He believed all he saw and imagined all he did not see. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

I set more store by a good regimen that maintains my humors in balance and procures me a commendable digestion and a sound sleep. Drink hot when it freezes, drink cool in the dog days; in everything, neither too much nor too little; digest, sleep, have pleasure, and snap your fingers at the rest of it. - Voltaire, Count Chesterfield’s Ears, 1775.

In those days dreams gave a man a great reputation. - Voltaire, Plato’s Dream, 1756.

Hardly has a man begun to get a little education when death becomes before he has experience. - Voltaire, Micromegas. 1752.

Books rule the world, or at least those nations which have a written language; the others do not matter. - Voltaire.

There is nothing so common as to imitate the practice of enemies and to use their weapons. - Voltaire.

So you are counting on eating a Jesuit today; that is a very good thing to do; nothing is more just than to treat one’s enemies thus. In fact natural law teaches us to kill our neighbor, and this is how people behave all over the world.... Certainly it is better to eat one’s enemies than to abandon the fruits of victory to the crows and the ravens. - Voltaire, Candide, 1759.

Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference. - Voltaire.

I sometimes tell them that all is for the very best, but those who have been ruined and mutilated at war believe nothing of it, and neither do I. - Voltaire, Story of A Good Brahman, 1761.

I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it. - Voltaire.

It is the first law of friendship that it be cultivated; the second law is to be indulgent when the first law has been neglected. - Voltaire.

The wicked... are always unhappy. They serve to test a small number of just men scattered over the earth, and there is no evil out of which some good is not born. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

There has never been a perfect government, because men have passions; and if they did not have passions, there would be no need for government. - Voltaire.

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give it to the other. - Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary, 1764.

On what does happiness depend? Everything persecutes me in this world, even beings that do not exist. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

I have told myself a hundred times that I would be happy if I was as stupid as my neighbor, and yet I would want no part of such a happiness. - Voltaire, Story of a Good Brahman. 1761.

History is but a picture of crimes and misfortunes. - Voltaire, Ingenuous. 1767.

Ancient histories, as one of our wits has said, are but fables that have been agreed upon. - Voltaire, Jeannot et Colin.

I am weary of all the nonsense with which so many self-styled historians have stuffed their chronicles and of all the battles they have so badly described. I would just as soon believe that Gideon won a signal victory with three hundred pitchers. - Voltaire, ount Chesterfield’s Ears. 1775.

I shall relate candidly how the thing happened, without putting in anything of my own; which is no small effort for a historian. - Voltaire, Micromegas. 1752.

It had seemed to him that human nature was once double, and that as a punishment for its faults it was divided into male and female. - Voltaire, Plato's Dream, 1756.

Do you think... that men have always massacred each other as they do today, always been liars, cheats, faith-breakers, ingrates, brigands, weaklings, rovers, cowards, enviers, gluttons, drunkards, misers, self-seekers, carnivors, calumniators, debauchers, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools? - Voltaire, Candide, 1759.

“Men,” said the angel Jesrad, “pass judgement on everything without knowing anything. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

In the course of conversation they agreed that things in this world did not always go as the wisest men would wish. The hermit steadfastly maintained that we do not know the ways of providence and that men were wrong in passing judgement on a whole of which they perceived only the smallest part. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

No doubt those who have thus bought the right to judge sell their judgements; I see nothing here but abysses of iniquity. - Voltaire, The World As It Is, 1748.

Let all the laws be clear, uniform and precise: to interpret laws is almost always to corrupt them. - Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 1764.

Which one of us shall dare to change a law that time has consecrated? Is there anything more respectable than an ancient abuse? - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

In all things he preferred being to seeming, and thereby he attracted true consideration, to which he did not aspire. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. - Voltaire, Candide, 1759.

"You are very hard," said Candide.
"That's because I have lived," said Martin. - Voltaire, Candide, 1759.

A hundred times I wanted to kill myself, but I stil loved life. This ridiculous foible is perhaps one of our most disasterous inclinations. For is there anything more stupid than to want to bear conntinually a burden that we always want to throw to the ground? To regard our being with horror, and to cling to our being? In fine, to caress the serpent that devours us until it has eaten our hearts. - Voltaire, Candide, 1759.

He who said that we are born, live, and die without knowing how, said a great truth. - Voltaire, Count Chesterfield's Ears. 1775.

A budding and resisted passion exploaded, a satisfied love knows how to hide itself. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

When one is loved by a beautiful woman... one always gets out of trouble in this world. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

When a man is in love, jealous, and whipped by the Inquisition, he is out of his mind. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

He then visualized men as they really are, insects devouring one another on a little atom of mud. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

Inexplicable humans... how can you combine so much baseness and so much greatness, so many virtues and so many crimes? - Voltaire, The World as It Is, 1748.

Man was born to live in the convulsions of anxiety or the lethargy of boredom. - Voltaire, Candide, 1759.

I know I am among civilized men because they are fighting so savagely. - Voltaire.

Private misfortunes make up the general good; so that the more private misfortunes there are, the more all is well. Voltaire, Candide. 1759.

By all the greatest crimes
Established on the throne
In these our peaceful times
He is the foe alone.
- Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

Where there is nothing, the King loses his rights. - Voltaire, Ingenuous. 1767.

The toilet has so much power that diarrhea often makes a man pusillanimous. Dysentery takes away courage. Do not propose to a man weakened by insomnia, by a slow fever, and by fifty putrid evacuations, to go and attack an enemy in broad daylight. That is why I cannot believe that our whole army had dysentery at the battle of Agincourt, as it is said, and that they won the victory pants down. - Voltaire, Count Chesterfield's Ears. 1775.

Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills. - Voltaire, to Count de Schomberg. August 31, 1769.

How do there come to be so many men who for so little money make themselves the persecutors, the satellites, the executioners of other men? With what inhuman indifference a man in high position signs an order for the destruction of a family, and with what still more barbaric joy mercenaries carry it out! - Voltaire, Ingenuous. 1767.

Secret griefs are even more cruel than public miseries. - Voltaire, Candide. 1759.

Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors. - Voltaire, Mérope, 1743.

Meanwhile peace was declared. The leaders of both armies, neither of whom had won the victory, but who in their own interest alone had caused the bloodshed of so many of their fellow men, went to their courts to intrigue for rewards. - Voltaire, The World As It Is. 1748.

To succeed in chaining the crowd you must seem to wear the same fetters. - Voltaire.

The public is a ferocious beat; one must either chain it up or flee from it. - Voltaire, to Mlle. Quinault. August 16, 1748.

To overturn the colossus, we need only five or six philosophers who understand each other. - Voltaire.

Impromptu verses are never good in the eyes of anyone but the lady in whose honor they are composed. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

Here is the Minister of War I would choose: I would want a man of the highest birth, because he gives orders to the nobility. I would require him to have been an officer himself, to have come up through all the ranks, to be at least Lieutenant-General of the Armies and worthy to be a Marshall of France. For is it not necessary for him to have served in person, the better to know the details of the service? And won't the officers obey a hundred times more cheerfully a man of war who like themselves has manifested courage than an armchair strategist who can at most only guess at the operations of a campaign, however good a mind he may have? - Voltaire, Ingenuous. 1767.

I presume that in general those who meddle with public affairs sometimes perish miserably, and that they deserve it. - Voltaire, Candide. 1759.

He [the governor] spoke to men with the noblest disdain, bearing his nose so high, raising his voice so pitilessly, assuming so imposing a tone, affecting so lofty a bearing, that all who addressed him were tempted to give him a beating. - Voltaire, Candide. 1759.

What have you done to have so much? You've hardly given yourself the trouble to be born and that's about it: for the rest you're an ordinary person while I damn it, lost in the anonymous crowd, have had to use all my science and craft just to survive. - Voltaire, Figaro.

It is essential to quote what we do not understand at all in the language we understand the least. - Voltaire, Micromegas, 1752.

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

I want my attorney, my tailor, my servants, even my wife to believe in God, and I think I shall then be robbed and cuckolded less often. - Voltaire.

For if God can change nothing in the affairs of this world, what is the use of singing his praises, what is the use of addressing prayers to him? - Voltaire, Count Chesterfield's Ears, 1775.

Men have always sought to learn how the soul acts on the body. We should have learned first whether we had a soul. Either God has made us this present, or he has communicated the equivalent to us. However he may have gone about it, we are in his hands. He is our master, that is all I know. - Voltaire, Count Chesterfield's Ears, 1775.

I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.- Voltaire.

Every day it was new accusations; the first is repulsed, the second brushes you, the third wounds, the fourth kills. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

“By all the Gods!” said the soldier, “I know of nothing about it. It is none of my business; my trade is to kill and be killed to earn my living; it makes no difference whom I serve. Indeed I might well go over to the Indian camp tomorrow, for people say they give their soldiers a copper half-drachma a day more than we get in this cursed service of Persia. If you want to know why we are fighting, talk to my captain. - Voltaire, The World As It Is. 1748.

The child she would have born might have been a cabin-boy, become an admiral, won a naval battle at the mouth of the Ganges and completed the dethroning of the Grand Mogul. That alone would have changed the constitution of the universe. - Voltaire, Count Chesterfield's Ears,1775.

The first who was king was a successful soldier. He who serves well his country has no need of ancestors. - Voltaire, Mérope, 1743.

When you don't get your due in one world you find it in another. It is a very great pleasure to see and do new things. - Voltaire, Candide. 1759.

All thinking beings are different, and at bottom they are all alike by gift of thought. - Voltaire, Micromegas, 1752.

There are truths that are not for all men, nor for all occasions. - Voltaire, to Cardinal de Bernis. 1761.

All men are agreed on the truth when it is demonstrated, but they are all too divided over obscure truths. - Voltaire, Ingenuous. 1767.

I am afraid the truth may be a very small thing. In mathematics we have performed prodigies that would astound Apollonius and Archimedes and make them our pupils; but in Metaphysics, what have we discovered? Our ignorance. - Voltaire, Count Chesterfield's Ears, 1775.

Self-love is a balloon inflated with wind, whence tempests emerge when it has been pricked. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

O virtue! of what use have you been to me?... All the good I have done has always been a curse to me, and I have been raised to the pinnacle of greatness only to fall into the most horrible abyss of misfortune. If I had been wicked, like so many others, I would be happy like them. - Voltaire, Zadig. 1747.

Nothing encourages virtuous actions more than having as witness and judge of one’s conduct a mistress whose esteem one wants to deserve. - Voltaire, The World As It Is. 1748.

When I cast my eyes over this globe, or rather over this globule, I think that God has abandoned it to some maleficent being.... I have hardly seen a town that did not desire the ruin of the neighboring town, never a family that did not want to exterminate some other family. Every day the weak loathe the powerful treat them like flocks whose wool and flesh are for sale, a million regimented assassins, ranging from one end of Europe to the other, practice murder and brigandage with discipline to earn their bread, because there is no more honest occupation; and in the towns that seem to enjoy peace and where the arts flourish, men are devoured with more envy, cares, and anxieties than the scourges suffered by a town besieged. - Voltaire, Candide. 1759.

Constipation has sometimes produced the bloodiest scenes. My grandfather, who died a centenarian, was Cromwell's apothecary; he has often told me that Cromwell had not been to the toilet for a week when he had his king's head cut off. - Voltaire, Count Chesterfield's Ears, 1775.

Do you realize, for example, that at this moment when I am speaking to you there are a hundred thousand madmen of our species covered with hats killing a hundred thousand other animals covered with turbans, or being massacred by them, and that over almost all the earth that is how people have behaved from time immemorial? - Voltaire, Micromegas. 1752.

It must be admitted that God made women only to tame men. - Voltaire, Ingenuous. 1767.

Work keeps away three great evils: boredom, vice, and need. - Voltaire, Candide. 1759.

To hold a pen is to be at war. - Voltaire, to Mme. d’Angental, October 4, 1748.

I think another good idea would be some quotes from Cicero, with "On Duties," "The Republic," and "The Laws" (De officiis, De re publica, and De legibus respectively), since I think he is one of the ancient fathers of conservatism.

I can't bring myslef to believe that Cicero had much intelligent to say he was incompetent at everything but speaking and Julius Caesar( whom I greatly admire) was of the opinion he was a pompous ass. Cicero was a Republican diehard long after the Republic had become totally unworkable and had become more of a Democracy. I'm a conservative but no fan of Democracy

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can exist only until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse (defined as a liberal gift) out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship." Alexander Tyler.

Many of the Voltaire quotes, it seemed to me, were a cross between Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde. And since many came from novels, was it always Voltaire speaking in the character's voice?

Well for one thing he is another conservative who shares my dim view of Democracy

" Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods." HL Mencken

Of course Julius Caesar would say something along those lines, because Cicero criticized Caesar. Needless to say, I would disagree with your characterization, but I respect that as your opinion.

Actually, most were written as novellas or plays much like Shakespeare. Voltaire, if I recall correctly, is actualy a pen-name which he wrote under to avoid being jailed by the French government. Although he was careful to always place his stories in faraway places with foreign characters, he was mocking the French monarchy and all knew it.

Indeed, Voltaire is a pen name, meaning roughly, "wishful one." His real name was Francois-Marie Arouet.

Voltaire was a funny, perceptive, and quite merciless man. He let no windbag go unpunctured -- but he always laughed as he skewered. Thanks for posting these.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

Re HL Mencken's "New Deal Constitution": You are absolutely right. This does not seem to be something a liberal would write. I've read a bit of Mencken, and some things critical of Republicans of the day, but had not seen that piece. That notwithstanding, wasn't he a Democrat? I may be mistaken. But in those days there actually were conservative Democrats.

"In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give it to the other. - Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary, 1764."

Ahem.......the more things change....you know the rest.

Everything I see about me is sowing the seeds of a revolution that is inevitable, though I shall not have the pleasure of seeing it. The lightning is so close at hand that it will strike at the first chance, and then there will be a pretty uproar. The young are fortunate, for they will see fine things.
Voltaire

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