1,052 Quotes by Voltaire

I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

They soothed him with words of flattery, and they gave him hope—the two traps into which people the world over will always fall.

The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

Sect and error are synonymous.

De som menar att det finns sanningar som bör undanhållas folket behöver inte oroa sig: folket läser inte. Det arbetar sex dar i veckan och den sjunde sitter det på krogen.

Is politics nothing other than the art of deliberately lying?

Descartes gave sight to the blind. These saw the errors of antiquity and of the sciences. The path he struck out is since become boundless [....] In fathoming this abyss no bottom has been found. We are now to examine what discoveries Sir Isaac Newton has made in it.

It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection.