Voltaire

1694–1778 · French Enlightenment writer, satirist and philosopher

Voltaire is the default owner of any homeless epigram in English, and this one reached him by a comic route. Watch the name decay: ‘Etaislaw Lee’ in 1964, then Stanislaus Leszczynski — an actual eighteenth-century king of Poland — in a 1973 jeweller’s advertisement, then the novelist Stanislaw Lem in a 1997 quotation dictionary, and finally, in a 2004 meditation anthology, Voltaire. An aphorism with an unpronounceable author drifts toward the most famous aphorist available. He is also credited, wrongly, with ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’ — written about him by his biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall in 1906.

Traced to source

11 quotes we’ve traced to Voltaire

Not actually Voltaire

Often misattributed to Voltaire

Famous lines widely pinned on Voltaire that we’ve traced to someone else.

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