I believe in nothing here, except a handful of people, a few ideas, and the fact that one cannot arrest movement.

The world will not know liberty until all that is religious and political is transformed into something simple and human and made susceptible to criticism and denial.

We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation.

We could hardly believe that after so many ordeals, after all the trials of modern skepticism, there was still so much left in our souls to destroy.

You can no more bridle passions with logic than you can justify them in the law courts. Passions are facts and not dogmas.

The liberty of the individual is the greatest thing of all, it is on this and this alone that the true will of the people can develop.

Science even more than the Gospel teaches us humility. She cannot look down on anything, she does not know what superiority means, she despises nothing, never lies for the sake of a pose, and conceals nothing out of coquetry. She stops before the facts as an investigator, sometimes as a physician, never as an executioner, and still less with hostility and irony.