“The atheist . . . destroys the chimeras which afflict the human race, and so leads men back to nature, to experience and to reason.”

It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of religion that we shall discover truth, reason and morality.

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.

Don’t say anything about this to anybody. Any one would say that I am trying to play the good-natured philosopher. I am neither benefactor nor philosopher, but just a human being, and my charities are the pleasantest expense I have on these journeys.

The savage god of the Mexicans cannot be satisfied without thousands of mortals which are immolated to his sanguinary appetite.

The Jehovah of the Jews is a suspicious tyrant, who breathes nothing but blood, murder, and carnage, and who demands that they should nourish him with the vapours of animals.

All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God.

The source of man’s unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature.

When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon, than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths, or to reject absurdities, and palpable contradictions.

The Jupiter of the Pagans is a lascivious monster. The Moloch of the Phoenicians is a cannibal. The pure mind of the Christians resolved, in order to appease his fury, to crucify his own son.

It is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.

Tolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes to religious fanaticism.

These principles, universally recognized, are at fault when the question of the existence of God is considered; what has been said of Him is either unintelligible or perfectly contradictory; and for this reason must appear impossible to every man.

Only to finally get the barbarian pleasure to punish them in an excessive way, of no use for himself, without them changing their ways and without their example preventing others from committing crimes.

The inward persuasion that we are free to do, or not to do a thing, is but a mere illusion. If we trace the true principle of our actions, we shall find, that they are always necessary consequences of our volitions and desires, which are never in our power.

If the ministers of the Church have often permitted nations to revolt for Heaven’s cause, they never allowed them to revolt against real evils or known violencess. It is from Heaven that the chains have come to fetter the minds of mortals.

All religious notions are uniformly founded on authority; all the religions of the world forbid examination, and are not disposed that men should reason upon them.

This fond attachment to the well-known place Whence first we started into life’s long race.

Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation.

We know by now how to photograph poor people. What we don’t know is how to photograph affluence – whose other face is poverty.

If anyone can show me one example in the history of the world of a single spiritual person who has been able to show either empirically or logicall.

All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Dayis devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.

Return to the nothingness from which the mad hope and ridiculous fright of men dared call you forth to their misfortune. You only appeared as a torment for the human race.

I feel it racing through me, eating away at the weight. There is nothing that can kill me now; I am powerful and invincible and eternal.

The only real life is the collective life of the race; individual life has no existence except as an abstraction.