Love Quote by Voltaire

Voltaire’s jab lands because it flips a familiar proverb into an accusation. “Love is blind” is usually a romantic excuse: we can’t help what we overlook. Voltaire drags that sentimental alibi into daylight and points the finger at the real culprit: self-love, the mind’s most talented propagandist. The intent isn’t to shame affection; it’s to expose how often “love” is merely vanity wearing a nicer outfit.

The subtext is pure Enlightenment skepticism. In Voltaire’s world, human beings don’t mainly suffer from too much passion; they suffer from motivated perception. Self-love doesn’t just tilt the scales, it rigs the courtroom: it turns our desires into “reasons,” our pride into “principles,” our convenience into “morality.” Calling self-love “blind” is also a surgical insult, because blindness here isn’t innocence. It’s refusal. We don’t fail to see; we choose not to, because clarity threatens the flattering story we tell about ourselves.

Context matters: Voltaire wrote against the grain of inherited authority - church dogma, aristocratic privilege, public piety masking private vice. The line quietly suggests that hypocrisy isn’t an occasional character flaw; it’s a system, powered by ego. By sparing romantic love and indicting self-love, he’s also protecting what he sees as the better angels of sociability: empathy, friendship, and honest attachment. What deserves ridicule is not attachment to others, but the narcissistic fog that makes us mistake our reflection for truth.