Voltaire Quotes on Truth
Voltaire's reflections on truth, gathered here, combine Enlightenment courage with a temperate scepticism. He was acutely aware of the cost of truth-telling under unjust power, observing that it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong, a lesson his own life of exile bore out. At the same time Voltaire distrusted dogmatic certainty as much as error; in a remark marked here as attributed, he held that while doubt is an uncomfortable condition, certainty is an absurd one. He nonetheless believed that genuine inquiry leads upward rather than away from reverence, suggesting that a false science makes atheists while a true science humbles men before the Deity. Drawn from his letters and shorter writings, these passages present truth as something to be pursued bravely and held without arrogance.
Quotes
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“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”
Il est dangereux d'avoir raison dans des choses où des hommes accrédités ont tort. -
Attributed to Voltaire:
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
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“I do not know in the whole history of the world a hero, a worthy man, a prophet, a true Christian, who has not been the victim of the jealous, of a scamp, or of a sinister spirit.”
A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness(1902) | p. 52 -
“Satire lies about men of letters during their life, and eulogy after their death.”
A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness(1902) | p. 105 -
“It is the privilege of true genius , and certainly of the genius that opens a new road, to make without punishment great mistakes.”
1750s | "Siècle de Louis XIV", ch. 32 (1751), qtd. in Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1818), "Criticism of the Kantian philosophy" -
“"A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity"”
1760s | The critical review, or annals of literature, Volume XXVI , by A Society of Gentlemen (1768) p. 450