Helen Pringle tells us that Voltaire didn’t really say : ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’ which is a bit sad.
I hope she doesn’t debunk one of my favourite ‘famous last words’. Please tell me it’s true. I’ve always believed the story that when asked to repent and renouce the devil on his deathbed, Voltaire said . . .
“This is no time to be making new enemies”.
To debunk another famous one, Burke never said
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”
Don’t know about the veracity of Voltaire’s last words though.
There is a nasty story about Voltaire hounding mercilessly someone who wrote things that he did not like, to the point where the man’s livelihood was threatened.
And then there was the one about “let them eat cake”.
Also Tony Abbott did not say “let them eat lamingtons”. I wonder what he is saying about the NSW liberals?
Rafe, it was Rousseau rather than Voltaire who first published mention of a princess who said “let them eat cake” – in 1766, when Marie Antoinette was a small child living in Austria.
The M-A linkage arose in the 1790’s when revolutionaries were busy inventing all manner of calumnies – lesbianism, nymphomania, paedophilia, neoconservatism, opposition to Kyoto – against the Queen.
The Marie Antoinette misattribution is “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” in French.
So “Let them eat cake” is a mistranslation of a misattribution.
I am shocked to hear that Marie Antoinette opposed Kyoto. Would she stop at nothing?
Machiavelli, on his deathbed, was apparently asked by a priest whether he repented, with particular reference to his writing.
“Repent what? My sanity?”
The alleged last words of Dylan Thomas:
“I’ve just drunk eighteen straight double scotches. I think that’s a record.”
The alleged last words of Brendan Beahan to the nun caring for him:
“God bless ye, sister, may all your sons be bishops.”
As for Voltaire, he had a famous spat with Hume in which his behaviour was so bad that you have to seriously question his mental health.
Well, never trust the internet, but
http://www.geocities.###/Athens/7308/deathbed.htm ?
replace the ### with “com”, obviously. The spam filter blocks it otherwise