"As he sup'd one night with Mr. Pope at Twickenham he fell into a fit of swearing and blasphemy about his constitution. Old Mrs Pope ask'd him how his constitution came to be so bad at his age: "Oh (says he) those d—d Jesuits, when I was a boy, b—gg—r'd me to such a degree that I shall never get over it as long as I live". ... This was said in English aloud before the servants."

"Likewise, there is much truth in Voltaire's enthusiastic Orientalist assumption that unlike Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the Indian and Chinese "religions" were not based on prophetic "revelations" but on a purely human contemplation of reality."

"Italy had a Renaissance, and Germany had a Reformation, but France had Voltaire; he was for his country both Renaissance and Reformation, and half the Revolution. He carried on the antiseptic scepticism of Montaigne, and the healthy earthy humor of Rabelais; he fought superstition and corruption more savagely and effectively than Luther or Erasmus, Calvin or Knox or Melanchthon; he helped to make the powder with which Mirabeau and Marat, Danton and Robespierre blew up the Old Regime... No, never has a writer had in his lifetime such influence. Despite exile, imprisonment, and the suppression of almost everyone of his books by the minions of church and state, he forged fiercely a path for his truth, until at last kings, popes and emperors catered to him, thrones trembled before him, and half the world listened to catch his every word. It was an age in which many things called for a destroyer. "Laughing lions must come," said Nietzsche; well, Voltaire came, and "annihilated with laughter." He and Rousseau were the two voices of a vast process of economic and political transition from feudal aristocracy to the rule of the middle class...He was happy in his garden, planting fruit trees which he did not expect to see flourish in his lifetime. When an admirer praised the work he had done for posterity he answered, "Yes, I have planted 4000 trees." He rejects all systems, and suspects that "every chief of a sect in philosophy has been a little of a quack." "The further I go, the more I am confirmed in the idea that systems of metaphysics are for philosophers what novels are for women." "It is only charlatans who are certain. We know nothing of first principles. It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God formed the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will. Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.""

"Voltaire was the cleverest of all past and present men; but a great man is something more, and this he surely was not."

"He is by his opinions, and also by his middle-class origin, the natural leader of an implacable opposition."

"Not a day goes by without our using the word optimism, coined by Voltaire against Leibniz, who had demonstrated (in spite of the Ecclesiastes and with the approval of the Church) that we live in the best of possible worlds. Voltaire, very reasonably, denied that exorbitant opinion... Leibniz could have replied that a world which has given us Voltaire has some right to be considered the best."

"Voltaire, the greatest skeptic of his day, the materialist par excellence, shared Bailly's belief. He thought it quite likely that: Long before the empires of China and India, there had been nations cultured, learned, and powerful, which a deluge of barbarians overpowered and thus replunged into their primitive state of ignorance and savagery, or what they call the state of pure nature. Lettres sur l'Atlantide, p. 15. This conjecture is but a half-guess. There were such "deluges of barbarians" in the Fifth Race. With regard to the Fourth, it was a bonâ fide deluge of water which swept it away. Neither Voltaire nor Bailly, however, knew anything of the Secret Doctrine of the East. That which with Voltaire was the shrewd conjecture of a great intellect, was with Bailly a "question of historical facts.""

"Voltaire, the greatest of "infidels" of the eighteenth century, used to say, that if there were no God, people would have to invent one... Voltaire becomes, toward the end of his life, Pythagorical, and concludes by saying: "I have consumed forty years of my pilgrimage . . . seeking the philosopher's stone called truth. I have consulted all the adepts of antiquity, Epicurus and Augustine, Plato and Malebranche, and I still remain in ignorance. . . . All that I have been able to obtain by comparing and combining the system of Plato, of the tutor of Alexander, Pythagoras, and the Oriental, is this: Chance is a word void of sense. The world is arranged according to mathematical laws." ("Dictionnaire philosophique, 1764")"

"Mock on, mock on, Voltaire Rousseau; Mock on, mock on, 'tis all in vain! You throw the sand against the wind, And the wind blows it back again."

"I grew bored in France -- and the main reason is that everyone here resembles Voltaire."

"France is a nation with one religion and many sauces; England is a nation with many religions and only one sauce."

"One hundred years from my day there will not be a Bible in the earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity seeker."

"To determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?"

"Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense."

"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."

"Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers."

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

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."

"God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere."

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

"Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies."

"Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it."

"Business is the salt of life."

"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung."

""There is no God, but don't tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night". False quote, misattributed to Voltaire by Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind"

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

"L'adjectif est l'ennemi du substantif."

"I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker."

"Les médecins administrent des médicaments dont ils savent très peu, à des malades dont ils savent moins, pour guérir des maladies dont ils ne savent rien."

"L'étymologie est une science où les voyelles ne font rien et les consonnes fort peu de chose."

"O God, whom the world misjudges, and whom everything declares! listen to the last words that my lips pronounce! If I have wandered, it was in seeking Thy law. My heart may go astray, but it is full of Thee! I see, without alarm, eternity appear; and I can not think that a God who has given me life, that a God who has poured so many blessings on my days, will, now that my days are done, torment me for ever!"

"Jest with life: for that only is it good."

"It is strange that thought should depend upon the stomach, and still that men with the best stomachs are not always the best thinkers."

"Self-love is a balloon filled with wind, from which tempests emerge when pricked."

"Can we not seek the author of life but in the obscure labyrinth of theology?"

"Stupid stoics! you want to change man, and you destroy him!"

"Life is long enough for him who knows how to use it. Working and thinking extend its limits."

"It takes twenty years to bring man from the state of embryo, and from that of a mere animal, as he is in his first infancy, to the point when his reason begins to dawn. It has taken thirty centuries to know his structure; it would take eternity to know something of his soul: it takes but an instant to kill him."

"None have lived without shedding tears."

"Well! sage Evhemere, what have you seen in all your travels?" "Follies!"

"This world is but a lottery of goods, of ranks, of dignities, of rights."

"The reasonable worship of a just God who punishes and rewards, would undoubtedly contribute to the happiness of men; but when that salutary knowledge of a just God is disfigured by absurd lies and dangerous superstitions, then the remedy turns to poison."

"In those countries where the morals are the most dissolute, the language is the most severe; as if they would replace on the lips what has deserted the heart."

"With the world, do not resort to injuries, but only to irony and gayety: injury revolts, while irony makes one reflect, and gayety disarms."

"All the reasoning of man is not worth one sentiment of woman."

"History is only a record of crimes and misfortunes."

"Why do we dream in our sleep if we have no soul? and, if we have one, how is it that dreams are so incoherent and extravagant?"

"Voltaire inscribed on a statue of Love: "Whoever thou art, behold thy master! He rules thee, or has ruled thee, or will rule thee!""

"Laws should never be in contradiction to usages; for, if the usages are good, the laws are valueless."

"Philosophers and men of letters have done more for mankind than Orpheus, Hercules, or Theseus; for it is more meritorious and more difficult to wean men from their prejudices than to civilize the barbarian : It is harder to correct than to instruct."