Title page from Toleration and Other Essays

Toleration and Other Essays

This collection of essays by Voltaire contains a long essay on the Jean Calas case, several shorter essays on religious topics, and his famous poem on the Lisbon earthquake.

Key Quotes

Religion & Toleration

Human law must in every case be based on natural law. All over the earth the great principle of both is: Do not unto others what you would that they do not unto you. Now, in virtue of this principle, one man cannot say to another: “Believe what I believe, and what thou canst not believe, or thou…

Science

Unhappy mortals! Dark and mourning earth! Affrighted gathering of human kind! Eternal lingering of useless pain! Come, ye philosophers, who cry, “All’s well,” And contemplate this ruin of a world. Behold these shreds and cinders of your race, This child and mother heaped in common wreck, These…