Reporting of BastaBugie editorial team
And in any case this sentence states the impossible in that one must be tolerant with the tolerant, vice versa, one cannot help but be intolerant towards the intolerantOf Alfio Squillaci
(AUTOMATIC READING)
Like Galileo never wrote: «And yet it moves» and nowhere in Machiavelli's works is it found: "The end justifies the means", in the same way Voltaire never wrote or said «I don't agree with what you say, but I would give my life so that you could say it". So where does this urban legend come from??
I remember the television journalist Sandro Paternostro, vain and inconclusive Rai foreign correspondent, the one who definitively set, also for those who succeeded him, il “canon” of television correspondence from London on the thematic chain of caps-of-the-queen-dog-shows-and-so-minchionando (and all of Hume's and Dickens's England, of Labor and Shaw go to hell) he loved repeating this formula on the television program “Right of reply” from a few decades ago.
AN IMPOSSIBLE TO IMPLEMENT TOLERANCE
Even today it is retorted with great emphasis and citrulla magnanimity every time you show elegant tolerance towards your opponent. It is as full of vain fair play as it is logically meaningless only if we think that if we grant our opponent the freedom to say everything, even the intention to kill, us or others, on the one hand he would already do it and long before we sacrificed ourselves to allow him to say it, or it would do so with our consent.
The idea of tolerance can only start from one “ethical minimum” and it can only be mutual, Obviously, but he cannot allow ideas of extermination or other abominations in his interlocutor, that therefore no one, and moreover at the sacrifice of his own life, may allow you to tell anyone. If in fact one must be tolerant with tolerant people, vice versa, one cannot help but be intolerant towards the intolerant.
PHRASE MAY THIS
But cutting it short, Mr. de Ferney never said such a phrase. Why then is it attributed to him? The only known version of this quote is that of the English writer Evelyn Beatrice Hall, «I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it», The Friends of Voltaire, 1906, also taken up in the subsequent Voltaire In His Letters (1919).
To close the story of this false quote, Charles Wirz, Conservator of “the Voltaire Institute and Museum” of Geneva, he remembered in 1994, che Miss Evelyn Beatrice Hall, mise, wrongly, in quotation marks this quote in two works dedicated by her to the author of «Candide», and expressly recognized that the quotation in question was not Voltaire's handwriting in a letter of 9 maggio 1939, published in 1943 in the titled volume LVIII “Voltaire never said it” (pp. 534-535) of the magazine “Modern language notes”, Johns Hopkins Press, 1943, Baltimore.
BELOW IS THE EXTRACT OF THE LETTER IN ENGLISH
«The phrase “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” which you have found in my book “Voltaire in His Letters” is my own expression and should not have been put in inverted commas. Please accept my apologies for having, quite unintentionally, misled you into thinking I was quoting a sentence used by Voltaire (or anyone else but myself).»
MY OWN EXPRESSION = I SAID SO, NON-VOLTAIRE
The word “my own” are italicized intentionally by Miss Hall in her letter.
If we believe certain commentators then (Norbert Guterman, A Book of French Quotations, 1963), the phrase would also be in a letter of 6 February 1770 to Abbé Le Riche where Voltaire would say: “Mr. Abbot, I hate what you write, but I will give my life so that you can continue to write.”
Too bad if you consult the letter cited, neither such a phrase nor the concept will be found. This letter being short, it is better to quote it in full and write the final word on this legend.
LETTER TO ABAB LE RICHE
«A m. The Rich,
in Amiens.
6 FEBRUARY.
You left, Sir, of which pour of which. You will find stubborn barbarians everywhere. The number of wise people will always be small. It is true that it is increased ; but that's nothing compared to fools ; et, unfortunately, they say that God is always for the big battalions. Honest people must hold tight and covered. There is no way their little troop will attack the party of fanatics in the open countryside.
I was very sick, I die every winter ; this is what makes, Sir, that I answered you so late. I am no less touched by your memory. Continue your friendship ; she consoles me for my ills and the stupidities of humankind. Receive insurance, etc.»
AN UNSTOPPABLE SLOGAN (EVEN IF FALSE)
But by now Miss Hall's phrase had crossed the Atlantic and after a small rebound in the restricted circles of liberals it had entered the formidable circuit of the American media, via the popular Reader's Digest (June 1934) e la Saturday Review (11 Maggio 1935). And since then its spread has been unstoppable. Read More
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