Creatures of the same god

It does not require great art,
or magnificently trained eloquence,
to prove that Christians should tolerate each other.
I, however, am going further:
I say that we should regard all men as our brothers.

What? The Turk my brother?
The Chinaman my brother?
The Jew? The Siam?
Yes, without doubt;
are we not all children of the same father
and creatures of the same God?

Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on Christianity as a whole, especially the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of speech and separation of church and state.

Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets; his satirical novella Candide is particularly well-known. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties, despite the risk this placed him in under the strict censorship laws of the time.