Our life is nothing, it is true, but our life is divine. A breath of nature annihilates us, but we surpass nature in penetrating far beyond her vast phantasmagoria to the changeless and the eternal.

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind, and therefore independence of all social, political or religious prejudice... It loves one thing only... truth.

We are always making God our accomplice, that so we may legalize our own iniquities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benedictions for any victorious enormity.

Knowledge, love, power-there is the complete life.

Are we not all shipwrecked,...condemned to death?... However impatient our neighbours make us, however much indignation our race arouses, we are all bound together, and the companions of a chain-gang have everything to lose by mutual insults.

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.

Every situation is an equilibrium of forces; every life is a struggle between opposing forces working within the limits of a certain equilibrium