Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.

I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.

To understand oneself is the classic form of consolation; to elude oneself is the romantic.

Fear first created the gods.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.

To keep beauty in its place is to make all things beautiful.