There is no evidence that God ever interfered in the affairs of man. The hand of earth is stretched uselessly towards heaven. From the clouds there comes no help.

If all the historic books of the Bible were blotted from the memory of mankind, nothing of value would be lost.

It is with men as with other things. The mullein needs only a year, but the oak a century, and the greatest men are those who have continued to grow as long as they have lived.

Temptations are as thick as the leaves of the forest, and no one can be out of the reach of temptation unless he is dead. The great thing is to make people intelligent enough and strong enough, not to keep away from temptation, but to resist it.

When passions and appetites are stronger than the intellect, men are savages; when the intellect governs the passions, when the passions are servants, men are civilized. The people need education - facts - philosophy.

No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.

To be like other people is to be unlike ourselves.