‘What is toleration? It is the prerogative of humanity. We are all full of weakness and errors; let us forgive each other our follies, it is the first law of nature.’

Voltaire was one of the sharpest and funniest writers of the eighteenth century. Satirist, thinker, teller of tales, he observed the follies of humanity with an unflinching eye. He was a passionate believer in freedom of thought and the value of knowledge, doing everything he could to promote rational inquiry in a time of oppressive censorship. His writings in passionate defence of liberty and toleration speak to us today with a new urgency.

Emergency Voltaire provides a completely new selection from his ‘philosophical dictionaries’, offering knowledge and opinion on every subject under the sun and beyond, from faith, fanaticism and frivolity to the meaning of life itself, always with the wit and irreverence for which he is famous.

‘Let us read, and let us dance: for these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.’