Voltairism

I pedantically emphasize that this is a "reputed" Voltairism, although it's famous worldwide and always presumed authentic.

David Tereshchuk: French Claim for Origins of Investigative Journalism David Tereshchuk 2011

This is a fact as to which there can be no dispute among persons with knowledge enough and mental freedom enough to be competent to have an opinion, and Voltairism can only be fairly weighed if we regard it as being in the first instance no outbreak of reckless speculative intelligence, but a righteous social protest against a system socially pestilent.

Voltaire 2007

Such a liberation of the human mind as Voltairism can be effected only by the movement of many spirits, and they are only the few who are moved by moderate, reflective, and scientific trains of argument.

Voltaire 2007

Voltaire had seen all that he saw, and yet been indolent; or if he had been as clear-sighted and as active as he was, and yet had only lived fifty years, instead of eighty-four, Voltairism would never have struck root.

Voltaire 2007

Voltairism may stand for the name of the Renaissance of the eighteenth century, for that name takes in all the serious haltings and shortcomings of this strange movement, as well as all its terrible fire, swiftness, sincerity, and strength.

Voltaire 2007

The Christianity which he assailed was as little touched as Voltairism itself with that spirit of holiness which poured itself around the lives and words of the two founders, the great master and the great apostle.

Voltaire 2007

Protestantism in the sixteenth century, if it could have been accepted in France, would have been a more edifying dissolvent than Voltairism was in the eighteenth; but it is certain that the loosening of theological ideas and the organization connected with them and upholding them, was the first process towards making truly social ideas possible, and their future realization a thing which good men might hope for.

Voltaire 2007

Voltairism has proved itself as little capable as Catholicism of inspiring any piece that may match with Milton's "Areopagitica," the noblest defence that was ever made of the noblest of causes.

Voltaire 2007

We may think of Voltairism in France somewhat as we think of

Voltaire 2007

The Protestant dilution of the theological spirit seems thus to be in the long run a more effective preparation for decisive abandonment of it than its virulent dissolution in the biting acids of Voltairism, because within limits the slower these great transformations are in accomplishing themselves, the better it is for many of the most precious and most tender parts of human character.

Voltaire 2007