The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and … people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them on occasion.

I picture the vast realm of the sciences as an immense landscape scattered with patches of dark and light. The goal towards which we must work is either to extend the boundaries of the patches...

Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.

If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.

Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.

Scepticism is the first step towards truth.

Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.

All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone’s feelings.

How had they met? By chance, like everybody else. What were there names? What’s it to you? Where were they coming from? From the nearest place. Where were they going? Does anyone really know where...

One cannot get rid of a good education, nor, unfortunately, of a bad one, which often is such because one has not wanted to defray the expenses of a good one.

Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.

Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

People stop thinking when they cease to read.

One declaims endlessly against the passions; one imputes all of man’s suffering to them. One forgets that they are also the source of all his pleasures.