38 Voltaire Quotes: What He Wrote and What He Never Said

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38 Most Memorable Quotes By Voltaire

Voltaire, born François-Marie Arouet in Paris in 1694, was the sharpest wit of the French Enlightenment. He wrote plays, poems, histories, philosophical tales and more than 20,000 letters, and he spent his long life attacking censorship, religious persecution and cruelty with jokes that still land. It is no surprise that hundreds of sayings now circulate under his name.

Below are 38 of the most shared Voltaire quotes, grouped by theme. For each one you get the idea in plain language, where it comes from when that is known, and a clear flag when a line belongs to someone else. Several of the most famous "Voltaire quotes", including the one about defending to the death your right to speak, were not written by him at all.

Who Voltaire was

Young Arouet was jailed in the Bastille for eleven months in 1717 over a satirical verse, and it was after his release, in 1718, that he began calling himself Voltaire. A second clash with a powerful family in 1726 sent him into exile in England for about two and a half years. There he admired the greater freedom of religion and speech, and he came home determined to spread English ideas, including Newton's science, in France.

His Lettres philosophiques (1734) were banned and burned, so he took refuge at Cirey with the scientist Émilie du Châtelet, his companion for about sixteen years. He later spent time at the court of Frederick the Great in Prussia, fell out with the king, and finally settled at Ferney, near the Swiss border, where he lived for most of his last twenty years.

From Ferney he wrote Candide (1759), the Treatise on Tolerance (1763) and the Philosophical Dictionary (1764), and he campaigned to clear the name of Jean Calas, a Protestant merchant executed after a biased trial; the conviction was overturned in 1765. Voltaire died in Paris in 1778. He was refused a Christian burial, but in 1791 the revolutionary National Assembly moved his remains to the Panthéon.

Reason, doubt and thinking for yourself

1. Common sense is rare. "Common sense is not so common" comes from the article on common sense in his Philosophical Dictionary (A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary). He meant that sound judgement is something people have to work at.

2. Prejudice is what fools use in place of reason. The popular English line is not traced exactly; the nearest sourced entry is his dictionary definition of prejudice as an opinion held without judgement.

3. The brain is brilliant at justifying what it already believes. A neat description of what psychologists now call motivated reasoning, but no reliable source links this line to Voltaire.

4. Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is absurd. From a letter to Prince Frederick William of Prussia, 28 November 1770. Voltaire preferred honest uncertainty to confident error.

5. Faith is believing what reason cannot. From the article "The Flood" in the Philosophical Dictionary (1764), where he mocks attempts to explain miracles scientifically (The Works: Voltaire).

6. Dare to think for yourself. A fair summary of his spirit, but the short slogan has not been traced to his writings. It echoes the Enlightenment motto sapere aude, made famous by Immanuel Kant in 1784.

7. Think freely, and let others do the same. Usually linked to his Treatise on Tolerance, written after the Calas case (Traité sur la tolérance), though the exact English wording is unconfirmed.

8. Judge people by their questions, not their answers. Not Voltaire. It comes from the Duc de Lévis's Maximes et réflexions (1808), thirty years after Voltaire's death.

9. The more you read, the more you realise you know nothing. A Socratic thought often credited to Voltaire, with no reliable source.

10. Love those who seek truth; beware those who claim to have found it. Not Voltaire. André Gide wrote it in Ainsi soit-il (1952).

Religion, God and tolerance

11. People who make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. A widely used paraphrase of a passage in his Questions sur les miracles (1765) (Questions sur les Miracles). The original is longer, but the warning is his: fanaticism starts with surrendering judgement.

12. If God did not exist, we would have to invent him. His own line, from a verse letter of the late 1760s, which he quoted again in his 1770 letter to Prince Frederick William: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." He meant it as a defence of belief in God as a basis for morality, not as a joke against religion.

13. God as a circle whose centre is everywhere. This image of God is far older than Voltaire, and its first author is uncertain.

14. God as a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh. Not Voltaire. It is from H. L. Mencken's A Book of Burlesques (1920).

15. A deathbed refusal to make new enemies. The story that a dying Voltaire refused to renounce the devil with this quip is a joke told about several people. Quote researchers have found it attached to him only from the 1970s, two centuries after his death.

16. A prayer that his enemies be made ridiculous. This is genuine. In a letter to his friend Étienne Noël Damilaville of 16 May 1767, he joked that his only prayer was for God to make his enemies look ridiculous, and that God had granted it.

Power, justice and freedom

17. Each of us is shaped by our own time. The thought that few people rise above the ideas of their age is credited to Voltaire, but the exact source is unconfirmed. It is a useful reminder when judging people of the past, and ourselves.

18. A person is free the moment they want to be. From his tragedy Brutus (1730), act II, scene 1.

19. The comfort of the rich depends on many poor people. A sharp observation about inequality that is often credited to him; we could not confirm the source.

20. It is risky to be right when those in power are wrong. Taken from a remark in The Age of Louis XIV (1752) (The Age of Louis XIV); the popular English version is a loose rendering.

21. Better to spare a guilty person than condemn an innocent one. From his philosophical tale Zadig (1747) (Zadig). The same principle underlies the presumption of innocence in modern courts.

22. Disapproving of what someone says, yet defending to the death their right to say it. The most famous Voltaire quote is not his. The English writer Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing as S. G. Tallentyre, used it in The Friends of Voltaire (1906) to sum up his attitude.

23. Murder is punished, unless it is done in large numbers. Voltaire's bitter point about war, from the article "Rights" in Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1771): "It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."

24. Those on the beaten path throw stones at those showing a new road. Credited to his Philosophical Dictionary (Philosophical Dictionary); a fitting line from a man whose books were regularly burned.

25. We are guilty of all the good we failed to do. An unsourced paraphrase of a passage on government ministers in The Age of Louis XIV, chapter VI.

Life, happiness and Candide

26. We never really live; we only wait to live. This thought belongs to Blaise Pascal's Pensées, which Voltaire read and argued with. Its spread under Voltaire's name is probably a mix-up.

27. Optimism is insisting all is well when all is going badly. From Candide (1759) (Candide), in an exchange between Candide and his valet Cacambo. The whole novel mocks the philosopher Leibniz's claim that we live in the best of all possible worlds, a view Voltaire found hard to accept after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.

28. Fools admire everything written by famous authors. Also from Candide (Candide), spoken by the bored Venetian noble Pococurante, who claims to read only for his own pleasure. Voltaire is laughing at snobbery on both sides.

29. Even in deep misery, people cling to life. In Candide (Candide: or, Optimism), the Old Woman, after telling a series of terrible life stories, admits that she still loves life and calls that attachment a strange weakness of our species. It is one of the book's most human passages.

30. Appreciating others makes their excellence partly ours. A generous thought often credited to Voltaire; its source is unconfirmed.

31. The secret of being boring is to say everything. Genuine: from the sixth of his Discourses in Verse on Man (1738). Good advice for writers and speakers alike.

32. Love truth, but forgive error. From the second of the same Discourses (1738).

33. So many books, so few readers. A complaint that people read little, and read badly, is credited to Voltaire; the source is unconfirmed.

34. Ice cream is so good it should be illegal. A charming line, but no reliable source traces it to him.

35. The most important choice is to be in a good mood. Unconfirmed; no reliable source links it to Voltaire.

36. Not knowing where you are going, but going anyway. Also unconfirmed.

37. Life is a shipwreck, but we should still sing in the lifeboats. Popular and in his spirit, but we could not trace it to his writings.

38. Read and dance: two pleasures that harm nobody. From the article "Liberty of the Press" in the Philosophical Dictionary, where he argues that books, like dancing, should not frighten governments.

Why Voltaire still matters, and where to start reading

Voltaire's targets were intolerance, cruelty dressed up as justice, and the idea that some questions must never be asked. Those targets have not gone away. His method still works too: a well-aimed joke can puncture pompous authority faster than a long argument.

If you want to read him rather than just quote him, three books are a good start. Candide is short, funny and dark, and its final advice, that we must cultivate our garden, is about doing useful work rather than waiting for perfect answers. The Treatise on Tolerance shows him turning a single injustice into a campaign. And the Philosophical Dictionary can be dipped into an entry at a time.

Finally, a word on checking quotes. Of the 38 lines above, fewer than half can be traced to a specific Voltaire text, and at least six belong to someone else. When a saying has no book, letter or date attached, "attributed to Voltaire" is the honest label.

Sources: Wikipedia: Voltaire; Wikiquote: Voltaire (sourced and misattributed quotations); Wikipedia: Evelyn Beatrice Hall; Wikipedia: Candide.

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