Voltaire

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Better is the enemy of good.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.

A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.

Nothing is black or white.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors.

We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.

The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.

You’ll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that. Would Columbus have discovered America if he’d said ‘What if I sink on the way over? What if I meet pirates? What if I never come back?’ He wouldn’t even have started.

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

It is better to be frightened now than killed hereafter

When things are steep, remember to stay level-headed.

Do you know that the tendrils of graft and corruption have become mighty interlacing roots so that even men who would like to be honest are tripped and trapped by them?