Voltaire??

Question

What ideas did Voltaire have about the nature of human beings?

Answer 1

Voltaire thought that human beings tended to be trivial, silly, and irrational by nature, but that through education and reflection, they could gain knowledge and transform themselves into rational beings. He called this need to educate oneself "cultivating one's garden." In short, he tended to be pessimistic about the intelligence and the motives of other human beings, but he had immense confidence in the power of reason and in tolerance.

Here are a few quotes from him about his fellow humans:

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it."

"Man is free at the instant he wants to be."

"Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours."

"What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly- that is the first law of nature."

"It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him."

"Judge of a man by his questions rather than by his answers."

Answer 2

You ask a lot of questions about Voltaire. You could answer a lot of the questions by reading CANDIDE which is one of the funniest books every written. Then I would suggest that you read other materials by him. Most of his stuff deals with his times with parody and satire, but you will have to find a bit about the German Mathematician and philosopher Leibtnitz and his concept about the "best of all possible worlds" before you can truly understand what Voltaire is saying. Go ye therefore to a library and look at a book in Reference entitled MASTERPIECES OF WORLD PHILOSOPHY because I would not like for you to have to read dear old Leibtnitz. At the head of the article on what he wrote will be four or five main points. There you go, hop on your bike and off to the Bibliotek

Answer 3

Most of Voltaire's philosophy came from John Locke.

Answer 4

Voltaire is a French philosopher and writer. Voltaire was not his real name. He was buried at the pantheon in Paris.