An open library of thought
Fight fanaticism with reason and irony.
No authority may persecute people for beliefs that do not disturb public order; diversity of opinion is not dangerous in itself, but becomes so when power takes sides by force.
A court is asked to judge an act that can be proven, not the creed of the accused.
Belief in a supreme being known through the order of nature and moral conscience, without making revelation, dogma or clergy its conditions; Voltaire turns it against both fanaticism and atheism.
The universe is compared to a clock that implies a clockmaker, whose nature we nonetheless cannot know.
The claim that everything is for the best cannot justify concrete suffering; the problem of evil calls for humility about systems and for practical action against avoidable harm.
Telling the victims of the Lisbon earthquake that their deaths serve the general good consoles no one.
A persecuting zeal born of the conviction that one’s own truth authorizes violence; Voltaire fights it with ridicule, history and publicity under the watchword “écrasez l’infâme”, crush the infamous thing.
The chevalier de La Barre was executed in 1766, condemned in part for failing to remove his hat as a procession passed.