“Those who can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities.”
- VOLTAIRE
HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY OF VOLTAIRE
BY NATALIE PEAY, MORGAN POPE, NICOLAS MONTELEAGRE, MAGGIE WIBRIGHT,
DAVID WHITE, RICKY SIMPKONS
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François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire) was born on 21
November 1694 in Paris, France, the youngest
of five children in a middle-class family. His
father was François Arouet, a notary and minor
treasury official; his mother was Marie
Marguerite d'Aumart, from a noble family of
Poitou province.

Young Francois Marie
received his education
at “Louis-le-Grand,” a
Jesuit college in Paris
where he showed a
talent for languages.
However, he said he
learned nothing but
“Latin and the
Stupidities.” He left
school at 17.
(A Jesuit college is founded
by the society of Jesus)
By the time he left college, Voltaire had
already decided he wanted to become a
writer.
 However, his father very much wanted him to
become a lawyer, so Voltaire pretended to
work in Paris as an assistant to a lawyer,
while actually spending much of his time
writing satirical poetry.
 He became very popular with Parisian
aristocrats and society circles.
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THE BASTILLE
From an early age, Voltaire
had trouble with the
French authorities for his
energetic attacks on the
government and the
Catholic Church, which
resulted in numerous
imprisonments and exiles
in the Bastille throughout
his life.
He adopted the name
"Voltaire", both as a penname and for daily use,
which many have seen as
marking his formal
separation from his family
and his past.

In 1726, Voltaire insulted the powerful young
nobleman, “Chevalier De Rohan,” and was
given two options: imprisonment or exile. He
chose exile and from 1726 to 1729 lived in
England.
While in England Voltaire was attracted to the
philosophy of John Locke and ideas of
mathematician and scientist, Sir Isaac Newton.
 He studied England's Constitutional Monarchy and
its religious tolerance. Voltaire was particularly
interested in the philosophical rationalism of the
time, and in the study of the natural sciences.
 After returning to Paris he wrote a book praising
English customs and institutions which met great
controversy in France (including the burning of
copies of the work), and in 1734 Voltaire was
forced to leave Paris again.
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His second exile, from 1734 until
1749, was spent at the Château de
Cirey (near Luneville in northeastern
France) owned by the Marquis
Florent-Claude du Chatelet and his
wife, the intellectual Marquise
Emilie du Chatelet.
He began a fifteen year relationship
with the Marquise, both as lovers
and as collaborators in their
intellectual pursuits, during which
they collected and studied over
21,000 books and performed
experiments in the natural sciences
in a laboratory.
EMILIE DU CHATELET

He continued to write, often in collaboration
with the Marquise, both fiction and scientific
and historical treatises, as well as on more
philosophical subjects (especially Metaphysics,
the justification for the existence of God and
the validity of the Bible). He renounced religion,
and called for the separation of church and
state and for more religious freedom.

Voltaire then moved to Potsdam (near Berlin)
to join Frederick the Great (1712 - 1786), a
great friend and admirer of his, with a salary
of 20,000 francs a year. After a promising
start, Voltaire attracted more controversy in
1753 with his attack on the president of the
Berlin Academy of Science.

Once again, documents were burned and he fled toward
Paris to avoid arrest, but Louis XV had banned him from
returning to Paris, so instead he turned to Geneva,
Switzerland, where he bought a large estate. Although he
was welcomed at first, the law in Geneva banned
theatrical performances and the publication of his works
and Voltaire eventually left the city in despair.
In 1759, he finally settled at
an estate called Ferney, close
to the Swiss border, where he
lived most of his last 20 years until just before of
his death, and where he continued to receive all
the intellectual elite of his time. His frustrating
experiences of recent years inspired his bestknown work, "Candide, ou l'Optimisme"
("Candide, or Optimism").
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Voltaire returned to a hero’s welcome in Paris
in 1778 at the age 83. However, the excitement
of the trip was too much for him and he died in
Paris soon after. Because of his criticism of the
church, Voltaire was denied burial in church
ground. He was finally buried at an abbey in
Champagne. In 1791, his remains were moved
to a resting place at the Pantheon in Paris.
FAVORITE QUOTES
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers
are punished unless they kill in large numbers
and to the sound of trumpets.”
 “God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give
ourselves the gift of living well.”
 “God is a comedian, playing to an audience too
afraid to laugh.”

“The instruction we find in books is like fire. We
fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home,
communicate it to others, and it becomes the
property of all.”
 “I have never made but one prayer to God, a very
short one: "O Lord make my enemies ridiculous."
And God granted it.”
 “It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one
must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.”
 “Opinion has caused more trouble on this little
earth than plagues or earthquakes.”
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