Voltaire on freedom

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"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men." - Voltaire

For nearly 50 years Voltaire preached freedom of thought and denounced cruelty and oppression in all its forms. Voltaire was bourgeois, not a democrat. He believed in reasonable dissent. He believed in natural religion and praised French artistic and cultural achievement during the Age of Louis XIV. Politically he advocated the concept of Enlightened Despotism. Above all others Voltaire stood as the champion of reason and tolerance. As a young man he was known in Paris for his plays and his wit and conversation. He once offended the aristocrat Chevalier de Rohan, who, too proud to fight a duel with a commoner ordered his servants to give Voltaire a street beating. He was then ordered to the Bastille. By agreeing to leave France Voltaire was granted his freedom. He immediately left for England.



While in England he found that he could say what he pleased and was not beaten for it. He quickly fell in love with a country where literary men and scientists were highly respected. In 1727 he attended the funeral of Isaac Newton and later wrote that he was overwhelmed to see "a professor of mathematics buried like a king."



Voltaire was not an atheist, but he was against any and all religions that were opposed to freedom of thought.