Tyrants turned pale.... : Studying Voltaire

Sunday morning.
My favorite time.
MY time!
Let's LEARN!

This morning I am studying the life of Voltaire. He spent decades fighting for tolerance and freedom and changed the world for the better. He fought tyranny and fanaticism and cruelty and he didn't care if his enemies were priests or bishops or aristocrats or kings he fought them all and he would never stop.

Two times he was arrested and sent to the Bastille and three times he was exiled from his homeland. Later in life he lived on the border between France and Switzerland so when the authorities came for him he could run! He would antagonize the rulers of the land with his criticisms and mockery and then, when they came for him, he would escape across the border.

Some people criticized him for running but I admire him. He was a guerrilla fighter against an oppressive government. Hit and run! We should ALWAYS hit the bad people. But then we have no obligation to let the bad people hit us back....

Voltaire was one of the most brilliant men of the 1700's and a literary genius whose pen made him the most famous man in the world and, ultimately, one of the richest.

He lived long enough to be recognized as a hero of civilization and great people from all over the world, people like Benjamin Franklin from the United States, made pilgrimages to his home to visit the giant of the age.

The French philosopher, and editor of the famous Encyclopedie, Diderot wrote of Voltaire while he was still alive: “Pile assumptions on assumptions; accumulate wars on wars; make interminable disturbances succeed to interminable disturbances; let the universe be inundated by a general spirit of confusion; and it would take a hundred thousand years for the works and the name of Voltaire to be lost.”

In the 1800's the British historian Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote: “In truth, of all the intellectual weapons that have been wielded by man, the most terrible was the mockery of Voltaire. Bigots and tyrants, who had never been moved by the wailings and cursing of millions, turned pale at his name.”

Whenever we feel grateful for being free, we should remember Voltaire.

[Read this excellent biography of the great Voltaire.]

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Copyright © 2017 by Joseph Wayne Gadway