Judge A Man By His Questions

This aphorism is widely attributed to Voltaire but has not been located in any verified primary text. It circulates in collections of his sayings and is consistent with his epistemological views — he consistently valued inquiry over assertion and was suspicious of those who claimed easy answers — but it should be treated as a probable misattribution or paraphrase rather than a verified quotation. Voltaire's genuine writings on questioning and inquiry include the Philosophical Dictionary (1764) and his extensive correspondence with Frederick the Great and other philosophes, which repeatedly return to the virtue of skeptical inquiry.