Voltaire

Voltaire was born Francois-Marie Arouet in Paris in 1694 and reinvented himself so thoroughly that the original name hardly matters. He was imprisoned in the Bastille twice, exiled to England, invited to the court of Frederick the Great, and eventually settled at Ferney on the Swiss border, close enough to flee if France came for him. He wrote plays, histories, philosophical tales, and tens of thousands of letters. Candide, his most famous work, mocks the idea that this is the best of all possible worlds by sending its innocent hero through earthquake, inquisition, and war. The closing line, cultivate your garden, is the conclusion of a philosopher who has looked at the human record and decided that modest, practical improvement is the only honest hope. He died in Paris in 1778, returning in triumph after twenty-eight years of exile. He was eighty-three.