Voltaire (real name Franзois-Marie Arouet) (1694 - 1778) was a French philosopher and writer of the Age of Enlightenment. His intelligence, wit and style made him one of France's greatest writers and philosophers, despite the controversy he attracted.
He was an outspoken supporter of social reform (including the defence of civil liberties, freedom of religion and free trade), despite the strict censorship laws and harsh penalties of the period, and made use of his satirical works to criticize Catholic dogma and the French institutions of his day. Along with John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his works and ideas influenced important thinkers of both the American and French Revolutions.
He was a prolific writer, and produced
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His father was Franзois Arouet, a notary and minor treasury official; his mother was Marie Marguerite d'Aumart, from a noble family of Poitou province.
Voltaire was educated by Jesuits at the Collиge Louis-le-Grand in Paris from 1704 to 1711, where he showed an early gift for languages, learning Latin and Greek as a child, and later becoming fluent in Italian, Spanish and English as well. He, however, claimed that he learned nothing but "Latin and the Stupidities".
By the time he left college, Voltaire had already decided he wanted to become a writer. However, his father very much wanted him to become a lawyer, so Voltaire pretended to work in Paris as an assistant to a lawyer, while actually spending much of his time writing satirical poetry. Even when his father found him out and sent him to study law in the provinces, he nevertheless continued to write.
Voltaire's wit soon made him popular among some of the aristocratic families of Paris and he became a favourite in society circles. When Voltaire's father obtained a job for him as a secretary to the French ambassador in the Netherlands, Voltaire fell in love with a French refugee named Catherine Olympe Dunoyer, but their scandalous elopement was foiled by Voltaire's father and he was forced to return to