“It is not the citizen who is tolerant or persecuting, it is the legislator.”Voltaire · Dicționar filozofic · 1764 · Tolérance
Tolerance is not a virtue of manners but a clause of the law: only the lawmaker can systematically persecute.
Voltaire shifts responsibility from ordinary people to those who make the laws. A citizen may be ill-intentioned, but cannot persecute systematically; only the legislator has the power to ban a faith, punish an opinion, or guarantee freedom of conscience. That is why the demand for tolerance must be addressed to the law, not to manners. A concrete example: if the law punishes blasphemy, persecution becomes official no matter how mild individuals are; if the law protects it, bad citizens are left without an instrument.
Voltaire shows that law does not merely restrain evil; it can also produce persecution. An intolerant legislator turns ordinary citizens into instruments of repression, even if they feel no hatred. Think of an official enforcing a law that bans a certain faith: not wicked by nature, yet his act becomes persecution because the law gives him the power. Individual tolerance, without legal backing, stays fragile. And if the law decides which beliefs are legitimate, the question becomes: who decides which law is just?
Why it matters Useful today when judging legislation on free speech or freedom of conscience: real tolerance is measured in laws, not in declarations of goodwill.