Voltaire

"If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?" - CANDIDE Candide is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. It is the absurdly melodramatic story of a young man, Candide, living a sheltered life who clings desperately to "the best of all possible worlds," one which is abruptly interrupted by a series of painfully disillusioning events that set him off on a wide-ranging journey....

From the Publisher: The Philosophical Dictionary was emblematic of the French Enlightenment. The scathing work chipped away at the archaic institutional structures of Old Regime France and the power of the Catholic Church. Bearing little resemblance to a modern-day dictionary, Voltaire's work uses sarcasm and maxims alike to engage the reader.

"All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds"
 
It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this "optimism" concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the "all for the best" approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to natural disasters, not to mention the questions of illness and man-made war. Moreover, as the rebel whose satiric genius had earned him not only international acclaim, but two stays...