- Lived:
- 1647–1706 · Le Carla, France → Geneva → Sedan → Rotterdam
- Tradition:
- Early Enlightenment; radical skepticism and the philosophy of toleration
- The Big Idea:
- No one — no king, no church, no majority — has the right to force a conscience, even a mistaken one; and no belief, however old and universal, is true just because everyone repeats it.
- In their words:
- "The antiquity and general acceptance of an opinion is no assurance of its truth."
- If you remember one thing:
- A refugee whose brother died in a French dungeon for his writings answered persecution not with a sword but with a dictionary — whose footnotes quietly armed the entire Enlightenment.