I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.

All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it

Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.

The more I read, the more I meditate; and the more I acquire, the more I am enabled to affirm that I know nothing

Common sense is not so common.

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.

The history of human opinion is scarcely anything, more than the history of human errors

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

It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.

The United States has subcontracted Brazil for security and Canada for economic development. But they’re all reporting to Washington. The final decisions are made there,

Fear follows crime, and is its punishment

God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions.

All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce...

A fondness for roving, for making a name for themselves in their onw country, and for boasting of what they had seen in their travels, was so strong in our two wanderers, that they resolved...

Don’t think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money.

when man was put into the garden of eden, he was put there with the idea that he should work the land; and this proves that man was not born to be idle.

My dear young lady, when you are in love, and jealous, and have been flogged by the Inquisition, there’s no knowing what you may do.

It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part, the rest are lost in the multitude

Originality is nothing by judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

Nature has made us frivolous to console us for our miseries

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world

The sentiment of justice is so natural, and so universally acquired by all mankind, that it seems to be independent of all law, all party, all religion.

Originality is nothing but judicious plagiarism.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

That is indisputable,’ was the answer, ‘but in this country it is a good thing to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.

Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.

One should always cite what one does not understand at all in the language one understands the least.

Since the time of Voltaire and two-chamber Government, which is at bottom simply distrust and personal self-examination, and gives the popular mind that bad habit of being suspicious, the Church of France seems to have...

Having lived with kings, I have become a king in my own home.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

Long ago, someone said that fools found religions, but the prudent govern them

This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire

The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.

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

Every abuse ought to be reformed, unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself.

This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.

It requires ages to destroy a popular opinion

A long dispute means that both parties are wrong

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.

Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.

L’homme est libre au moment qu’il veut l’être.

A true god surely cannot have been born of a girl, nor died on the gibbet, nor be eaten in a piece of dough… [or inspired] books, filled with contradictions, madness, and horror.

It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.

All I know,’ said Candide, ‘is that we must cultivate our garden.

The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.