Diderot vs Voltaire: should knowledge be gathered or aimed?

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DENIS DIDEROT vs VOLTAIRE go head to head — and every jab is rooted in real history.

DENIS DIDEROT

I gave the world an Encyclopédie so the baker, the tanner, and the philosopher could all sit at one table of learning.

VOLTAIRE

And I gave them a rapier, Denis; a single witty blade cuts tyranny faster than your twenty-eight volumes gather dust.

DENIS DIDEROT

Dust? Every trade, every craft, every fact I catalogued so no idea could be lost when censors came knocking.

VOLTAIRE

Yet men do not read a warehouse, they remember a wound; I write to be aimed, you write to be shelved.

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