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Who really said it

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers

Not Voltaire — actually the duc de Lévis Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Lévis 1764–1830 · French aphorist, soldier & Académie française member
Disputed Free to reuse

The thought belongs to Pierre-Marc-Gaston, duc de Lévis, whose Maxim xviii reads “Il est encore plus facile de juger de l’esprit d’un homme par ses questions que par ses réponses” in his Maximes et réflexions sur différents sujets de morale et de politique (Paris, 1808). The popular English — “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers” — is a smoothed paraphrase of that maxim, and appears nowhere in Voltaire; Wikiquote lists it under Voltaire’s “Misattributed” section.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers” Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Lévis, Maximes et réflexions (1808), Maxim xviii — commonly misattributed to Voltaire.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Voltaire. Use the credit shown above instead.

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In context

Evoking the world of Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Lévis — French duke, soldier & aphorist; Académie française. Theme: "Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

The real source

Work
Maximes et réflexions sur différents sujets de morale et de politique
Author
Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Lévis (1764–1830)
First published
Paris, 1808 — Maxim xviii
English wording
A later paraphrase, misattributed to Voltaire

Il est encore plus facile de juger de l’esprit d’un homme par ses questions que par ses réponses.

Lévis’s original French (Maxim xviii). A close translation is “It is even easier to judge a man’s mind by his questions than by his answers” — the circulating English drops “even easier” and “mind” and turns it into a crisp imperative.

Wikiquote: the line in Voltaire's Misattributed section

How we verified this

Public domain

The maxim comes from Lévis’s Maximes et réflexions, first published in Paris in 1808 — long in the public domain, as is the author, who died in 1830. The circulating English is a generic paraphrase of that public-domain French, not a protected modern translation.

Fact-check

Why everyone says “Voltaire”

This is a textbook case of a pithy maxim drifting to a more famous French name. Lévis wrote a two-part comparison in 1808; the internet kept the punch and swapped the author.

Voltaire Misattributed

Quote sites, Goodreads and image-quote culture almost universally credit Voltaire, but the wording is found nowhere in his writings. Wikiquote lists it under “Misattributed” and names Lévis as the real source.

Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Lévis (paraphrased) Paraphrase

Lévis actually wrote “Il est encore plus facile de juger de l’esprit d’un homme par ses questions que par ses réponses” — a comparative observation. The English strips it to a clean command, so even the correctly-sourced version is a loose paraphrase, per Wikipedia’s note that it is ‘a version of one maxim by Lévis’.

The idea is genuine and traceable — it is Maxim xviii of the duc de Lévis’s Maximes et réflexions (1808), not anything Voltaire wrote.

Context

One maxim, two casualties of the internet

Lévis published his Maximes et réflexions in 1808, a slim book of aphorisms in the French moralist tradition of La Rochefoucauld and Chamfort. Among them is Maxim xviii: judging a mind is easier by the questions it asks than by the answers it gives — a compact endorsement of curiosity as the truer index of intelligence.

Over the following two centuries the maxim shed its author. Stripped to an imperative and re-branded “Voltaire,” it now circulates as a caption on countless quote images — a reminder that a good line about asking questions rarely gets asked where it came from.

Judge a mind by its questions — and a quote by its sources.

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Doubt

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Voltaire — Misattributed (Wikiquote)en.wikiquote.org

Lists this quote under Voltaire's Misattributed section and gives Lévis's 1808 Maxim xviii as the true source.
Pierre Marc Gaston de Lévis (Wikipedia)en.wikipedia.org

Biography noting the Voltaire misattribution and confirming the maxim is Lévis's own.
Voltaire quotations file (WIST)wist.info

Flags the line as misattributed and prints Lévis's French original.
Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Lévis (fr. Wikiquote)fr.wikiquote.org

Collection of Lévis's maxims from the Maximes et réflexions (1808).
Académie française — Lévisacademie-francaise.fr

Official record of Lévis as an elected member of the Académie française.

The author

About Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Lévis

Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Lévis

1764–1830 · French duke, soldier & aphorist; Académie française

Pierre-Marc-Gaston, duc de Lévis (1764–1830) was a French soldier, royalist politician and man of letters, elected to the Académie française in 1816. He is best remembered as an aphorist for his Maximes et réflexions sur différents sujets de morale et de politique (1808), a slim collection in the French moralist tradition. His terse maxims were later, and wrongly, absorbed into the vast pool of quotations pinned on Voltaire.

For writers & researchers

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Primary source

Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Lévis, Maximes et réflexions sur différents sujets de morale et de politique (Paris, 1808), Maxim xviii: “Il est encore plus facile de juger de l’esprit d’un homme par ses questions que par ses réponses.” Misattributed to Voltaire.

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/judge-a-man-by-his-questions-rather-than-by-his-answers

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