Voltaire’s phrase – you must cultivate your own garden – is one of the most famous statements in the world. But what did Voltaire mean by this – and what can we learn from it to help us live our lives today? Here is a recipe for how to survive our troubled times.
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“It is crucial to note the subtitle of 18th century Europe’s most famous novel, written in three inspired days in 1759: ‘Candide – or Optimism’. If there was one central target that its author wanted satirically to destroy, it was the hope of his age, a hope that centered around science, love, technical progress and reason. Voltaire was enraged. Of course science wasn’t going to improve the world; it would merely give new power to tyrants. Of course philosophy would not be able to explain away the problem of evil; it would only show up our vanity. Of course love was an illusion; power a chimera, humans irredeemably wicked, and the future absurd. Of all this his readers were to be left in no doubt. Hope was a disease and it was Voltaire’s generous goal to try to cure us of it…”
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“It is of course far more likely that [Voltaire] wrote Candide over a ten-month period in 1758 and completed the manuscript, with final revisions and additions, in the fall of that year.” Gita May, Introduction to the Barnes and Noble Classics edition to “Candide.”
A fantasy loves your voice.
me, who studies international relations : well shit
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."- Voltaire.
stoic? more like epicurean
I feel like this vid was made for me
I also arrived at the same conclusion but it was not that elegantly put…
By the premise stated in this video and according to Voltaire, I’d better stop watching you tube then!
I really needed to hear this
Do you. Fuck em. – Voltaire
This is for those people who loose their sleep over who is the president trump or joe or obama or someone else
Right… What he is trying to say is that one can only teach one's self.. You can be shown but it is your interest, drive or ambition that completes your tuition.
فرانسوا فولتير فيلسوف فرنسا الأشهر محور تأليفه يدور على حرية الانسان واحترام العقائد وعدم التقيد بها( ١٦٩٤-١٧٧٨)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAb-dDrjmO8
I am French and I love this book so much 🙂
This guy sorta feels like a supervillain
What Rubbish
This video: How to think more effectively: never think outside your bubble. How to be more at peace: never reach beyond yourself and the simple and mundane. See only your own limited perspective of the tiny piece of life you personally experience, and in doing so there will be no repercussions later in life. No one will ever take from you that life. And world turmoil will never affect you (as it has even this year). Honest thoughts: It is negative and overwhelming to try and consume, understand, and control the whole world and its problems. But an equally foolish and far more cowardly and no less costly approach is to think only of yourself and your little bubble of life and say that nothing else matters. You cannot assume that if your garden grows then all is good in the world. Because if a world famine blights all the country's vegetables and your garden withers, it will surely affect your crop. And that is not something you can control but you could have helped and prepared for or mitigated the effects had you been prepared. Because ignorance is bliss, right up until the outside becomes impossible to ignore. This video is not enlightened. It preaches something narrow-viewed and dangerous.