11 Ideas from Voltaire, beyond the Memes
16 min readNov 20, 2022
Like so many other fine things, Voltaire has today mostly been reduced to a meme. In his case, it’s usually a meme with a quote that got falsely (but sympathetically) attributed to him — that he would die for your right to say things he disagreed with.
The idea that Voltaire was a “free speech absolutist” is deeply anachronistic. No one was in the 18th century, and it is a fair bet that any of…