“Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.”

I would rather obey a fine lion, much stronger than myself, than two hundred rats of my own species.

What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on.

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.

It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.

If you want to know who controls you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize.

Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.

We are rarely proud when we are alone.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.

The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.

Sometimes we are less unhappy in being deceived by those we love, than in being undeceived by them.

Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.