Politics & Power Quote by Voltaire

Voltaire’s line is a scalpel disguised as a shrug. “In general” pretends to be reasonable, almost statistical, before he drops the verdict: government isn’t a noble enterprise so much as a sophisticated transfer scheme. The sting is in “art.” He’s not describing policy as messy problem-solving; he’s framing it as a practiced craft of extraction and redistribution, implying calculation, showmanship, even aesthetic pride in the maneuver.

The subtext is less “taxes are bad” than “power is opportunistic.” Voltaire aims at the permanent temptation inside any state: to buy stability by picking winners, punishing the weak, and calling it justice. Notice how he refuses to name the classes. That vagueness is the point. It makes the quote portable across regimes: monarchies squeezing peasants, courts enriching favorites, revolutionary governments funding new elites, modern states routing money through bureaucratic pipes. Everyone can supply their own villain class, which is why the line survives.

Context matters: Voltaire is writing in an era where fiscal policy was visibly political theater. Ancien Regime France ran on exemptions, privileges, and uneven burdens - the kind of system where “class” wasn’t a metaphor but a legal reality. His Enlightenment skepticism distrusts sanctimony, especially when wrapped in administrative language.

What makes it work is its cynical compression. It reduces the romance of governance to a single recurring transaction, forcing the reader to ask an uncomfortable question: when politicians talk about the common good, whose pocket is being picked, and who gets the ribbon-cutting?