"All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets"

Voltaire draws attention to the paradoxical attitudes society maintains toward violence, particularly how moral and legal standards shift based on scale and context. The figure of the “murderer” typically evokes a sense of criminality and moral condemnation, someone who takes life unlawfully and is subject to severe punishment. Yet, when acts of killing are magnified and accompanied by ceremonial recognition, symbolized by "the sound of trumpets", evoking military display and political grandeur, they are not merely excused, but often celebrated.

The use of “large numbers” underscores the hypocrisy embedded in societal and governmental mechanisms: killing a few might be considered a crime, but killing many under the sanction of war or state order is reclassified as heroism, patriotism, or necessity. Trumpets, instruments often used in military parades and rituals, heighten the irony by illustrating how spectacle and ritual can lend legitimacy and even glory to acts that, on a smaller scale, are universally condemned. Public celebrations, medals, and national remembrance ceremonies annihilate the line between justifiable violence and mass murder, recasting the actors not as criminals, but as figures worthy of collective honor.

By focusing on numbers and ritual, Voltaire exposes how morality is not only subject to legal structures but also malleable depending on who commits violence and under what circumstances. Warfare, in particular, becomes a sphere where killing is institutionalized and sanitized, allowing individuals and nations to paradoxically uphold laws against murder while engaging in organized mass violence. The tension Voltaire highlights is timeless: leaders and societies continue to embrace double standards, all too willing to see individual acts of violence as abhorrent, yet capable of rationalizing, even romanticizing, slaughter when it is done for abstract causes, often under the banners of loyalty, defense, or destiny.