The atheist . . . destroys the chimeras which afflict the human race, and so leads men back to nature, to experience and to reason.

These principles, universally recognized, are at fault when the question of the existence of God is considered; what has been said of Him is either unintelligible or perfectly contradictory; and for this reason must appear impossible to every man.

If the ministers of the Church have often permitted nations to revolt for Heaven's cause, they never allowed them to revolt against real evils or known violencess. It is from Heaven that the chains have come to fetter the minds of mortals.

The unhappiness of people is due to their ignorance of nature.

Savage and furious nations, perpetually at war, adore, under diverse names, some God, conformable to their ideas, that is to say, cruel, carnivorous, selfish, blood-thirsty.

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.

The source of man's unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature.