Voltaire

Voltaire was the pen name of François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), the most famous writer in Europe for most of his long life and the one who did most to make tolerance an argument rather than a mood. He was imprisoned in the Bastille at twenty-three for verses about the Regent, exiled to England, and spent decades within reach of a border he might need. He wrote Candide in his sixties, not long after the Lisbon earthquake killed tens of thousands on All Saints' Day — a fact that is the spine of the book. Late in life he took up the cases of men executed on religious grounds and got their convictions overturned.