The greatest height of heroism to which an individual, like a people, can attain is to know how to face ridicule.

Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible.

Science is a cemetery of dead ideas, even though life may issue from them.

We men do nothing but lie and make ourselves important. Speech was invented for the purpose of magnifying all of our sensations and impressions — perhaps so that we could believe in them.

Chemistry ought to be not for chemists alone.

Anyone who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory.

The truth is that my work - I was going to say my mission - is to shatter the faith of men here, there, and everywhere, faith in affirmation, faith in negation, and faith in abstention in faith, and this for the sake of faith in faith itself; it is to war against all those who submit, whether it be to Catholicism, or to rationalism, or to agnosticism; it is to make all men live the life of inquietude and passionate desire.