To rulers religion, like almost everything else, is a tool of power.

The failure of the Reformation to capture France had left for Frenchmen no half-way house between infallibility and infidelity; and while the intellect of Germany and England moved leisurely in the lines of religious evolution, the mind of France leaped from the hot faith which had massacred the Huguenots to the cold hostility with which La Mettrie, Helvetius, Holbach, and Diderot turned upon the religion of the fathers.

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.

History repeats itself in the large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness.

In the last analysis civilization is based upon the food supply.

Never mind your happiness; do your duty.

Tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.