We Must Cultivate Our Garden

The closing words of Candide (1759), Voltaire's satirical novella attacking Leibnizian optimism — the philosophical doctrine that this is "the best of all possible worlds," embodied by the character Professor Pangloss. After a picaresque catalogue of disasters, war, earthquakes, and human cruelty, Candide rejects his tutor's speculative philosophy in favor of a small farm and concrete work. The French original is "Il faut cultiver notre jardin." Voltaire wrote Candide while living in exile at his estate in Ferney on the Franco-Swiss border, where he himself kept extensive gardens — lending the conclusion a personal as well as philosophical weight.