Voltaire

Their life

François-Marie Arouet, who took the name Voltaire, was the most famous writer in Europe for most of his eighty-three years — poet, playwright, historian, satirist, and the author of some twenty thousand letters. Imprisoned in the Bastille at twenty-three for verses mocking the regent and exiled to England at thirty-one, he returned with a conviction that outlived him: that cruelty thrives on unexamined authority, and that ridicule is a weapon against it. In old age he became something new — a private citizen who took up the cause of men destroyed by the courts, and won.

In their words

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Tables where Voltaire sits

The Pamphleteers

For the argument that must move people now — persuasion as action.

Voices of the Enlightenment

For reason, liberty, and thinking for yourself.

From the Journal