Quotation
Last reviewed:
“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”
Voltaire · Enlightenment · Enlightenment · c. 1768–1769
What does it mean?
The usual reading, once the poem is in view, is that belief in a just God who punishes and rewards is a bond of society, so that if such a being were not real one would have to invent the belief for the sake of justice. A competing reading, the one on posters, treats the line as Voltaire winking that God is a human invention and nothing more. He was a deist who spent the poem attacking a text he called atheistic, and he says the belief is the sacred tie of society and the brake on the villain. The verse is one line in the Epistle to the author of The Three Impostors. Detached, it says the opposite of the poem's target. He liked the line. He did not mean it as atheism.
Did Voltaire really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. The standard English of his French verse. He quotes the line again, with pride, in a letter to Saurin of 10 November 1770. In the poem he is answering a pamphlet he takes to be atheistic. The line is not a confession that God is a pious fraud he recommends.
Where it comes from
Épître à l'auteur du livre des Trois imposteurs (written c. 1768–1769); the French verse is 'Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer'
Approximate date: c. 1768–1769.
How to use it
A campaign in a British town that prints the sentence under a picture of a church and a sneer has reused his words against the poem. The honest use is narrower and less comfortable: ask what practices of justice you would still need if a cosmic judge were struck out of the story, and do not pretend he thought the answer was 'nothing'. He thought the answer was a belief strong enough to restrain cruelty. You may reject that and still not misquote him.
A mindset reading
A witty line that travels without its opponents will be captured by both sides. The habit is to ask whom the sentence was written against. Here it was written against people he thought were tearing up the idea of a just God. Reading it as his atheism is a failure of direction, like reading an answer as the accusation.
Understand the philosophy
The epistle is a verse letter of the late 1760s, not Candide and not the Philosophical Dictionary. The key line is the claim that God would have to be invented if he did not exist. Around it Voltaire calls that belief the foundation of equity. He remained a fierce critic of persecution, superstition, and clerical power. Those fights are real. They are not this sentence. This sentence is the part of him that thought atheism socially dangerous.
- society
- meaning
- ethics
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading, once the poem is in view, is that belief in a just God who punishes and rewards is a bond of society, so that if such a being were not real one would have to invent the belief for the sake of justice. A competing reading, the one on posters, treats the line as Voltaire winking that God is a human invention and nothing more. He was a deist who spent the poem attacking a text he called atheistic, and he says the belief is the sacred tie of society and the brake on the villain. The verse is one line in the Epistle to the author of The Three Impostors. Detached, it says the opposite of the poem's target. He liked the line. He did not mean it as atheism.
Did Voltaire really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. The standard English of his French verse. He quotes the line again, with pride, in a letter to Saurin of 10 November 1770. In the poem he is answering a pamphlet he takes to be atheistic. The line is not a confession that God is a pious fraud he recommends.
Which work is it in?
Épître à l'auteur du livre des Trois imposteurs (written c. 1768–1769); the French verse is 'Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer' Approximate date: c. 1768–1769.