The beginning of a revolution is in reality the end of a belief.

Are the worst enemies of society those who attack it or those who do not even give themselves the trouble of defending it?

In crowds it is stupidity and not mother wit that is accumulated.

The images evoked by words being independent of their sense, they vary from age to age and from people to people, the formulas remaining identical. Certain transitory images are attached to certain words: the word is merely as it were the button of an electric bell that calls them up.

If atheism spread, it would become a religion as intolerable as the ancient ones.

At the bidding of a Peter the Hermit millions of men hurled themselves against the East; the words of an hallucinated enthusiast such as Mahomet created a force capable of triumphing over the Graeco-Roman world; an obscure monk like Luther bathed Europe in blood. The voice of a Galileo or a Newton will never have the least echo among the masses. The inventors of genius hasten the march of civilization. The fanatics and the hallucinated create history.

Science has promised us truth...It has never promised us either peace or happiness.