Voltaire Country Quotations

Who serves his country well has no need of ancestors.

In this country we find it pays to shoot an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.

Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.

But in this country it is necessary, now and then, to put one admiral to death in order to inspire the others to fight.

In this country [England] it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others. The reference is to Admiral John Byng, who was executed in 1757 for failing to prevent the French from taking Minorca.

Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors.

Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.

So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbors. The citizen of the universe would be the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer.

A multitude of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady.

He who seeks truth should be of no country.