Evelyn Beatrice Hall Quotes
I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.
Hall wrote the above in The Friends of Voltaire as an illustration of Voltaire's beliefs. This quotation – which is sometimes misattributed to Voltaire himself – is often cited to describe the principle of freedom of speech. Hall wrote under a man’s name so that her work would be taken more seriously which it was.
She was dealing with a serious campus situation where an invited speaker, Chief of Police Kelly of New York City was prevented from giving his p resentation on the controversial “Stop and Frisk” rules by student protesters who opposed the practice. Brown’s tradition of hearing anyone on the campus regardless of point of view had been broken to the distress of most students, faculty and alumni.
In 1989 the leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, claimed that Salmon Rushde, a British author and Iranian native, had written a blasphemous book and should therefore be killed. Not all Muslim spiritual leaders agreed:. 6 weeks after making this statement on television, he himself was assassinated.
Evelyn Beatrice Hall (28 September 1868 – 13 April 1956), who wrote under the pseudonym S G. Tallentyre, was an English writer best known for her biography of Voltaire entitled The Life of Voltaire, first published in 1903. She also wrote The Friends of Voltaire, which she completed in 1906.
