How had they met? By chance, like everybody else. What were there names? What’s it to you? Where were they coming from? From the nearest place. Where were they going? Does anyone really know where they’re going?
One swallows the lie that flatters, but sips the bitter truth drop by drop.
All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone’s feelings.
Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.
Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and … people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them on occasion.
If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.
Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.
Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.
One cannot get rid of a good education, nor, unfortunately, of a bad one, which often is such because one has not wanted to defray the expenses of a good one.
Only passions great passions can elevate the soul to great things.
Isn’t it better to have men be ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?
Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.
The best doctor is the one you run for and can’t find.
You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.
If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can’t deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge… observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.
When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man’s name live for thousands of years.
There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.
Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.
The best doctor is the one you run to and can’t find.
Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.
No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.
We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
Only passions, great passions can elevate the soul to great things.
Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man.
Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.
Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.
When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.
There are things I can’t force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.