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Lord Macauley, quoted at the History House site
Asimov's biographical encyclopedia of science and technology:
The lives and achievements of 1195 great scientists
from ancient times to the present chronologically arranged
by Isaac Asimov
Originally 1964: I'm looking at the "new revised edition"
published in 1975 by Pan Reference Books
Letter to Étienne-Noel Damilaville
(16 MAY 1767)
Quoted in Wikiquote here
"He had a passion for justice, religious toleration, and freedom, and he was a man of the greatest generosity. Besides his caustic works on religion he wrote serious works on toleration, science and other subjects, and was one of the leading historians of his time and a tragedian of distinction."
"These (Enlightenment) writers prized clarity and wit, and Voltaire's writing abounds in both. However, these qualities are somewhat dimmedfor many contemporary readers who don't have the background to appreciate his jokes or grasp his points without assistance.These notes try to provide some assistance in this regard, and draw the reader's attention to the most important issues."
"The chief purpose of THE VOLTAIRE SOCIETY OF AMERICA INCORPORATED is to foster the spirit of the Enlightenment, tolerance and respect for the rights of the individual as exemplified by the life of Voltaire and as reflected in the beliefs of his contemporaries, the founders of the United States."
"Voltaire's sitting-room, and bed-chamber,have been scrupulously preserved in the same state in which they were left at the time of his death...We observed several prints framed and glazed, hanging upon the walls of his bed-room, portraits of those celebratedcharacters he particularly esteemed, either for their talents or from motives of personal regard. Among them we remarkedthose of Milton (notwithstanding Voltaire's unjust critiques upon the Paradise Lost), Newton, Washington, Franklin, Marmontel, Corneille, Racine, Helvetius, and Delille."
"That it is Voltaire's masterpiece everyone, with the exception of the master himself, agrees. ...
... the best-seller of the eighteenth century. Candide has lost none of its eighteenth-century appeal. Local conditions have changed, but the general butts of Voltaire's satire have not. Unvictorious English admirals are no longer shot as object lessons in military perseverance, and Jesuits, so far as I know, no longer make good eating for the worthy descendents of the Oreiilons, but there is little dimunition in our time of the human scourges of war, famine, rape, avarice, persecution, bigotry, superstition, intolerance, and hypocrisy. For those who hate avoidable human suffering as Voltaire did, Candidestill serves as an effectual whip with which to lash once agin the perpetuators of this suffering."
Philosophy in Literature by Morris Weitz, page 11
"Joining the hero in his travels, we note some of Voltaire's targets. The list is almost endless. Social injustice, religious opression, medical fraud and quackery, legal corruption, class snobbery, court flattery, slavery, tyranny, prostitution, syphilis, and ubiquitous greed, hypcrisy, and stupidity -- nothing escapes his lethal pen."
"Well, to what dogma do all minds agree? to the worship of a God and to integrity. All the philosophers of the world who havehad a religion have said in all time -- 'There is a God, and one must be just'. There, then, is the universal religion established inall time and throughout mankind.
The point in which they all agree is therefore true, and the systems through which they differ are therefore false."
"(Voltaire) derived his natural philosophy from Newton and Clarke, his theory of knowledge and hisideas on toleration from Locke, the main principles of his ethics from Shaftesbury, his critical method and theconception of natural religion from the Deists."
"A Voltairean is a man (or woman) who is bent on seeing clearly in all matters; in religion and philosophy he is willing to believe only that which he understands, and to accept ignorance in all the rest; he values reality more than speculation, and simplifies ethics as well as dogma, both for the sake of practical virtues; in politics he favors a moderation that guarantees natural freedom, as well as the freedoms of conscience, of expression, and of person; one which eliminates as much evil and brings about as much good as possible, and places justice among the most desireable goods; in the arts he appreciates restraint and truth above all; he hates hypocrisy, fanaticism, and bad taste with a passion and, not limiting himself to hating these, he will fight them to the bitter end."
Ernest Bersot, quoted in
The Oxford Companion to French Literature,
Paul Harvey and J.E. Heseltine, eds.
quoted in Voltaire
by Peyton Richter and Ilona Ricardo, page 150
"The superiority of (Voltaire's novel) Candide lies in its universality, in its epic proportions. Basically, it has two things to say: the reality is bad, but the denial of that reality is even worse. If the world is wicked, let us not pretend that it is good, for that will not help us to cope with it."
"As Robert Anchor described it in The Enlightenment Tradition (University of California Press), the belief in a "hidden hand" was pervasive in the eighteenth century; it rested on the notion of "a basic harmony of interests among men in the long run," so it was "only necessary to release everyone to pursue freely his own self-interest in order to realize a harmonious social order."
By the end of the eighteenth century, philosophers had pretty much abandoned the idea of the hidden hand and "basic harmony" – after the violence of the French Revolution made clear that "harmony" was not the order of the day."
Voltaire
The Philosophical Dictionary,
entry on Mohammedans,
the main import of which is
"It is not worth the trouble to indulge
in unjust reproaches against Islam."
-- words that many contemporary writers
should certainly take to their hearts.