Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer.
Voltaire said of himself that he ‘wrote to act’, and he wanted his writings to change the way people thought and behaved. In leading his crusades against fanaticism, he even invented a campaign slogan, Ecrasez l’Infâme!, which translates roughly as ‘Crush the despicable!’. L’Infâme stands here for everything that Voltaire hates, everything that he had spent his life fighting: superstition, intolerance, irrational behaviour of every kind.
Voltaire’s legacy in our present debates about religious toleration remains potent, argues The School of Life. Hardly a week passes without an article in the press quoting ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ This rallying cry of tolerant multiculturalism is so potent, that if Voltaire hadn’t said it, we would have had to invent it.
As he was dying, a priest asked him to renounce Satan. Voltaire reportedly replied: "Now is not the time for making new enemies."