If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.

We know that all the arts are brothers, that each of them illuminates another, and that a universal light results.

Every man can educate himself. It's shameful to put one's mind into the hands of those whom you wouldn't entrust with your money. Dare to think for yourself.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

If there were no God, it would have been necessary to invent him.

One always speaks badly when one has nothing to say.

Everything happens through immutable laws, ...everything is necessary... There are, some persons say, some events which are necessary and others which are not. It would be very comic that one part of the world was arranged, and the other were not; that one part of what happens had to happen and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason badly; others not to reason at all others to persecute those who reason.