What Voltaire Actually Said About Truth
All 3 Voltaire passages on truth, in full — what each one claims, what holds them together, and who argues the other way.
Voltaire returns to truth three times in thinkr's library — more often than to almost anything else. French Enlightenment satirist and crusader for civil liberty. Candide remains a masterwork of philosophical wit.
What follows is every one of those passages, in full, with what each is actually claiming. The language is of its period, but the question underneath is not: what is truth for, and what does it ask of you?
Every Voltaire passage on truth
“Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.”
“Optimism, said Cacambo, What is that? Alas! replied Candide, It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst!”
“A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity”
What holds these together
Read in sequence rather than one at a time, the passages stop being separate aphorisms. Voltaire is not offering three opinions about truth; the lines are facets of one position, and the repetition is the argument. The shortest of them — “A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity” — is the version you can carry, and the longer ones are what it unpacks into.
Voltaire applied to a real decision
Quotation is the easy part. The harder test is what the position actually does when it meets a situation where every option costs something. thinkr puts two such cases to Voltaire.
Public life feels ugly, exhausting, and still important.
Argued as public courage: You are treating speech as a duty when stakes are real. The danger is becoming addicted to opposition.
The news makes you feel responsible and useless at once.
Argued as stoic discipline: You are matching concern to agency so that concern can become action. The cost is a world that shrinks to the size of your street.
Work through these yourself
- Public life feels ugly, exhausting, and still important. — argued from public courage and several competing positions
- The news makes you feel responsible and useless at once. — argued from stoic discipline and several competing positions
Who disagrees
Socrates, David Hume, John Locke and Albert Camus all address truth too, and they do not converge. Reading Voltaire alone gives you a coherent position; reading Voltaire against Socrates shows you what the position is actually choosing against.