Voltaire's quote? ("I disagree with what you say, but I defend right to say it")

[Fred Shapiro]

The Evelyn Beatrice Hall source is the origin as far as I know.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations traces this to a letter by Voltaire to a M.
le Riche, Feb. 6, 1770, but that is an error on Bartlett's' part based on
a misreading of Norbert Guterman, A Dictionary of French Quotations.  The
quotation does not appear in Voltaire's Feb. 6, 1770 letter to
Francois-Louis-Henri Leriche, nor anywhere else in Voltaire's writings.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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