Q0395

Voltaire

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Thinker Voltaire
School Enlightenment
Source traditional attribution
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with traditional attribution, within the tradition of Enlightenment. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Voltaire's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Voltaire. (n.d.). I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0395

MLA: Voltaire. “I disapprove of what you say, but I….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0395.

Chicago: Voltaire. “I disapprove of what you say, but I….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0395.

Same thinker

More from Voltaire

  1. We must cultivate our garden.
  2. Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.
  3. Men must tolerate one another.
  4. If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

All quotations by Voltaire

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme