Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
I know of no great men except those who have rendered great service to the human race.
Voltaire
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Voltaire
Age: 84 †
Born: 1694
Born: February 20
Died: 1778
Died: May 30
Author
Autobiographer
Correspondent
Diarist
Encyclopédistes
Essayist
Historian
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Poet Lawyer
Political Scientist
Paris
France
François-Marie Arouet
Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire
Francois Marie Arouet
Dictator of Letters
Human
Humans
Great
Rendered
Men
Solidarity
Service
Except
Race
Helping
More quotes by Voltaire
History is the lie commonly agreed upon.
Voltaire
The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say but the flowery style ought to be banished from a pleading, a sermon, or a didactic work.
Voltaire
Men who have seen life and death... as an unbroken continuum, the swinging pendulum, have been able to move as freely into death as they walked through life. Socrates went to the grave almost perplexed by his companions' tears.
Voltaire
He who doesn't have the spirit of his time, has all its misery.
Voltaire
Translations increase the faults of a work and spoil its beauties.
Voltaire
Once the people begin to reason, all is lost
Voltaire
One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.
Voltaire
We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.
Voltaire
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 an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.
Voltaire
Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.
Voltaire
Needless to say since Christ's expiation not one single Christian has been known to sin, or die.
Voltaire
Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.
Voltaire
It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.
Voltaire
Being unable to make people more reasonable, I preferred to be happy away from them
Voltaire
The effervescence of this fresh wine reveals the true brilliance of the French people.
Voltaire
If it's too silly to be said, it can always be sung.
Voltaire
The policy of man consists, at first, in endeavoring to arrive at a state equal to that of animals, whom nature has furnished with food, clothing, and shelter.
Voltaire
Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.
Voltaire
It is reported in the supplement of the council of Nicæan that the fathers, being very perplexed to know which were the cryphal or apocryphal books of the Old and New Testaments, put them all pell-mell on an altar, and the books to be rejected fell to the ground. It is a pity that this eloquent procedure has not survived.
Voltaire
Come! you presence will either give me life or kill me with pleasure.
Voltaire
