Age of Enlightenment
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50 free Age of Enlightenment trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Enlightenment was the long eighteenth-century argument that people could think for themselves. Writers across Europe and its colonies questioned rulers, churches and old certainties, and their answers went on to shape how governments, courts and classrooms work. This quiz covers the thinkers and the books they are remembered for, the vocabulary every textbook expects you to know, the monarchs who tried reform from the top, and the places and meeting rooms where new ideas travelled from one reader to the next. It also follows those ideas outward, to the upheavals they helped inspire on both sides of the Atlantic. It suits students revising for AP European History or Global History, teachers who want a ready multiple-choice set, and anyone who enjoys a good argument about liberty. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess teaches you something too.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which French writer, born François-Marie Arouet, took his pen name after a spell in the Bastille?
Voltaire
Voltaire is known to have used at least 178 pen names. A second spell in the Bastille ended in exile to England, whose freedom of speech and religion impressed him.
Q 02Which English philosopher's Two Treatises of Government defended the right to overthrow a tyrant?
John Locke
John Locke published the work anonymously. Most scholars trace the American phrase 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness' to his theory of rights.
Q 03Which 1776 document drew on Enlightenment natural rights and listed 27 grievances against George III?
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence turned theory into an act of state: governments, it says, derive 'their just powers from the consent of the governed'.
Q 04Which Scottish 'father of economics' said an 'invisible hand' turns self-interest to public benefit?
Adam Smith
Adam Smith used the phrase only once in The Wealth of Nations. His earlier Theory of Moral Sentiments argued that people naturally take an interest in the fortunes of others.
Q 05Which English scientist, a hero to Enlightenment thinkers, set out laws of motion and gravity in the Principia?
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton spent some 30 years running the Royal Mint, pursuing counterfeiters whose crime was punished as high treason.
Q 06Which French thinker, often called the father of modern Western philosophy, wrote 'I think, therefore I am'?
René Descartes
René Descartes died, reportedly of pneumonia, within weeks of starting 5 a.m. lessons for Queen Christina in her cold, draughty castle.
Q 07Which American, the first US ambassador to France, invented the lightning rod and bifocal glasses?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin never patented his inventions, writing that people should share them 'freely and generously'.
Q 08Which German-born Russian empress had herself inoculated against smallpox as an example to her subjects?
Catherine the Great
Catherine the Great also wrote the Nakaz, a guide for a new law code that she admitted pillaging from the philosophers of Western Europe.
Q 09Which London meeting places were nicknamed 'penny universities' after their one-penny entry fee?
Coffeehouses
Coffeehouses also launched whole industries: Lloyd's Coffee House, a haunt of merchants and sailors, grew into the insurer Lloyd's of London.
Q 10Which Geneva-born author of The Social Contract wrote 'Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains'?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau saw the book burned in his home city and banned in Paris. He was also a composer who wrote seven operas.
Q 11Which Bordeaux judge argued in The Spirit of the Laws for splitting power among separate branches?
Montesquieu
Montesquieu first won fame with Persian Letters, a satire that mocked French society through the eyes of two Persian visitors to Paris.
Q 12Which English author of Leviathan called life without government 'nasty, brutish and short'?
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes said he was born early when his mother heard the Spanish Armada was coming: 'my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear.'
Q 13Which English author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman said women lacked only education?
Mary Wollstonecraft
Q 21Which French writer, jailed at Vincennes in 1749, edited the Encyclopédie through years of censorship?
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot was rescued from money troubles when Russia's empress bought his 3,000-volume library and paid him a yearly salary to look after it for life.
Q 22Which Enlightenment-era belief accepts a creator God but rejects revelation and religious texts?
Deism
Deism takes its name from the Latin deus, meaning 'god'. Many of its followers held that the creator simply stopped intervening once the universe was made.
Q 23Which French name is given to the Enlightenment's public intellectuals, who applied reason to every field?
Philosophes
Mary Wollstonecraft died 11 days after giving birth to a daughter, Mary Shelley, who grew up to write Frankenstein.
Q 14Which earlier movement, often dated from Copernicus's 1543 book, gave the Enlightenment its methods?
The Scientific Revolution
The Scientific Revolution is also dated from the anatomy book of Andreas Vesalius, On the Workings of the Human Body, which was printed in that same year.
Q 15Which Caribbean nation, inspired by French ideals of the rights of man, was founded by a slave revolt?
Haiti
Haiti is the only country in history established by a slave revolt, and it was the first in the Americas to abolish slavery officially.
Q 16Which Paris gatherings, run by hostesses such as Madame Geoffrin, became an Enlightenment institution?
Salons
Salons gave their hostesses real power over the talk: the salonnière was expected to run and moderate the conversation among her guests.
Q 17Which English-born writer's pamphlet Common Sense urged the American colonies to break from Britain?
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine was later jailed in France and narrowly escaped execution when a jailer chalked the death mark on the wrong side of his cell door.
Q 18Which flute-playing king of the Enlightenment called the ruler 'the first servant of the state'?
Frederick II of Prussia
Frederick II of Prussia was nicknamed the Potato King for pushing the new crop on his farmers, and visitors often leave potatoes on his grave.
Q 19Which European capital was wrecked by the All Saints' Day earthquake that Enlightenment thinkers debated?
Lisbon
Lisbon's disaster was the first earthquake studied scientifically for its effects over a large area, which led to the birth of modern seismology.
Q 20Which Königsberg philosopher answered 'What Is Enlightenment?' in 1784 with the motto 'Dare to know'?
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant borrowed the motto from the Roman poet Horace. His daily walks were said to be so regular that neighbours set their watches by them.
Philosophes were rarely philosophers by profession: they wrote on history, science, politics, economics and social issues for a wide public.
Q 24Which doctrine, preached to Louis XIV by Bishop Bossuet, put a monarch beyond any parliament or pope?
Divine right of kings
Divine right of kings meant that only God could judge a monarch, so any attempt to depose, resist or limit one could be treated as sacrilege.
Q 25Which artistic movement arose in response to the Enlightenment, prizing emotion and imagination?
Romanticism
Romanticism grew out of an earlier German movement known as Sturm und Drang, meaning 'Storm and Stress'.
Q 26Which Venezuelan general, shaped by Enlightenment philosophy during his years in Europe, was hailed as El Libertador?
Simón Bolívar
Simón Bolívar led what are now six countries to independence from Spain, and the last of them to break free, Bolivia, was named after him.
Q 27Which 1759 satire follows a naive young man taught by his tutor Pangloss that all is for the best?
Candide
Candide ends by trading that optimism for a practical rule, 'we must cultivate our garden'. The book was widely banned for blasphemy and sedition as soon as it appeared.
Q 28Which city, nicknamed the 'Athens of the North', was at the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment?
Edinburgh
Edinburgh's thinkers argued over new books daily at clubs such as the Poker Club, named for its aim to 'poke up' opinion on the militia issue.
Q 29Which lodge-based fraternity of the Enlightenment counted Mozart and George Washington as members?
Freemasons
Freemasons numbered between 50,000 and 100,000 in France by 1789, which made theirs the most popular of all Enlightenment associations.
Q 30Which economic doctrine is said to take its name from a merchant's reply to French finance minister Colbert?
Laissez-faire
Laissez-faire echoes the reply 'Laissez-nous faire', or 'leave it to us', given when Colbert asked how the state could help trade. The story first reached print in 1751, some seventy years later.