Quote by Voltaire: “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

Waiting until something is perfect before sharing or acting on it means you often never act at all. Good work done now beats ideal work that never arrives. Voltaire is warning against the paralysis that comes from setting impossible standards for yourself.

Voltaire used this phrase in his Dictionnaire philosophique in 1764 and again in later writings, adapting an Italian proverb. He was a prodigiously productive writer who completed dozens of major works, and his impatience with perfectionism was partly a personal manifesto.

French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on religious intolerance, and his advocacy for freedom of speech. His satirical novella Candide, published in 1759, remains a masterpiece of ironic prose.