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Life
The mind begins as a blank slate. All knowledge comes from experience. He wrote the philosophy that launched modern democracy.
The most dangerous writer of the eighteenth century. He used wit as a weapon and spent his life fighting ignorance, superstition, and cruelty in their most powerful forms.
Connection
John Locke introduced to English thought Voltaire — Voltaire's years in England exposed him to Locke's empiricism and Newton's science, which he brought back to France in the Letters Concerning the English Nation.
Ideas
Words
“No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.”
“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
“To hold a pen is to be at war.”
Key Moments
1632 CE
Born in Wrington, Somerset
1689 CE
Publishes Essay Concerning Human Understanding
1689 CE
Returns to England After the Glorious Revolution
1690 CE
Two Treatises of Government
1694 CE
Born in Paris
1734 CE
Letters on England
1759 CE
Candide
1778 CE
Death in Paris
Works
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Candide
Treatise on Tolerance