What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your own days.

Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.

Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.

The man who first pronounced the barbarous word God ought to have been immediately destroyed.

All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings... We must run roughshod over all these ancient puerilities, overturn the barriers that reason never erected, give back to the arts and sciences the liberty that is so precious to them.

What a fine comedy this world would be if one did not play a part in it.