Voltaire quote

[City_Gent]

Voltaire:

I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Everyone knows this one; it’s even on at least one Doper’s sig line.

Now I like Voltaire as much as the next guy, but this quote has always struck me as bombast. He will defend my right to free speech; OK, I appreciate it. But to the death? Come on. Is he saying that if I wanted to march into Tienanmen Square and accuse Jiang Zemin of being a reactionary fellow-traveler that he would literally take a bullet for me when the People’s Army showed up?

I don’t know what I’m looking for here. It just always bugs me when I see it quoted by the obviously non-militant, that’s all.

[Slithy_Tove]

Though often quoted, there is no documented proof that Voltaire ever actually said or wrote this.

However, he did write this: “history is a bag of tricks we play on the dead.” A much more useful quote.

[Dr.Lao]

Slithy Tove is right. Voltaire never said or wrote it. Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote it in her work Friends of Voltaire as the epitome of Voltaire’s beliefs. She later said it was a paraphrase of the line “Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.” from Voltaire’s Essay on Tolerance. So it appears a few liberties were taken in the paraphrase.

[matt_mcl]

I personally prefer the following:

Écartons ces romans qu’on appelle systèmes,
Et pour nous éléver descendons dans nous-mêmes.

(Let’s put those novels we call systems back on the shelves,
And to lift ourselves up, let us descend into ourselves.)

[CalMeacham]

“I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to my extreme inconvenience your right to say so.”

Naaah, hasn’t got the same ring.

[rowrrbazzle]

A friend of mine with Microsoft Bookshelf 98 found this:

in February 1770, Voltaire wrote to M. le Riche: “Monsieur l’Abbe, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.”

The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations is licensed from Columbia University Press. Copyright 1993, 1995 by Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

[Kyla]

According to Jacques Barzun, in From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, Voltaire never said it at all. From p. 361:

‘Nor did he write to Helvetius “I wholly disapprove of what you say-and will defend to the death your right to say it”; a 20C woman biographer said it for him.’*

Here is the footnote referred to (p. 814):

E. Beatrice Hall, writing as S.G. Tallentyre in The Friends of Voltaire, L., 1906, p. 199 and, slightly modified in Voltaire in His Letters, L., 1919, p. 65.

[Kyla]

Well, that’ll teach me not to read the entire thread before posting. But I have the cites!