So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

Theological religion is the source of all imaginable follies and disturbances. It is the parent of fanaticism and civil discord; it is the enemy of mankind.

Antiquity is full of the praises of another antiquity still more remote.

The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.

He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead.

The harmony of a concert, to which you listen with delight, must have on certain classes of minute animals the effect of terrible thunder; perhaps it kills them.

Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.