None of the miracles with which ancient histories are filled, occurred under scientific conditions. Observation never once contradicted, teaches us that miracles occur only in periods and countries in which they are believed in and before persons disposed to believe in them.

When people complain of life, it is almost always because they have asked impossible things of it.

The epic disappeared along with the age of personal heroism; there can be no epic with artillery.

Forgetfulness, and I would even say historical error, are essential in the creation of a nation.

Man is not on this earth merely to be happy, or even to be simply honest. He is there to realize great things for humanity, to attain nobility and to surmount the vulgarity of almost everybody.

Our opinions become fixed at the point where we stop thinking.

A nation has a soul, a spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other in the present. One is the possession of a rich legacy of memories; the other is the desire to live together and to value the common heritage.

I can die when I wish to: that is my elixir of life.

The greatest men of a nation are those it puts to death.

Muslims are the first victims of Islam. To liberate a Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him!

As a rule, all heroism is due to a lack of reflection, and thus it is necessary to maintain a mass of imbeciles. If they once understand themselves the ruling men will be lost.

The liberty of the individual is a necessary postulate of human progress.

It is through Christianity that Judaism has really conquered the world. Christianity is the masterpiece of Judaism.

No idea can succeed except at the expense of sacrifice; no one ever escapes without enduring strain from the struggle of life.

The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.

Blessed are the blind, for they know not enough to ask why.

Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation.

A nation is a body of people who have done great things together.

Good humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us.

He whom God has touched will always be a being apart: he is, whatever he may do, a stranger among men; he is marked by a sign.

The ignorance of French society gives one a rough sense of the infinite.

To conceive the good, in fact, is not sufficient; it must be made to succeed among men. To accomplish this less pure paths must be followed.

To be able to think freely, a man must be certain that no consequence will follow whatever he writes.

Man makes holy what he believes as he makes beautiful what he loves.

True Christianity, which will last forever, comes from the gospel words of Christ not from the epistles of Paul. The writings of Paul have been a danger and a hidden rock, the causes of the principal defects of Christian theology.

A grain of sand leads to the fall of a mountain when the moment has come for the mountain to fall.

God, if there is a God, take my soul, if I have a soul.

In morals, truth is but little prized when it is a mere sentiment, and only attains its full value when realized in the world as fact.

Let us remember that sorrow alone is the creator of great things.

Religion is not a popular error; it is a great instinctive truth, sensed by the people, expressed by the people.

Man makes holy what he believes.

Communism is in conflict with human nature.

To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together, to will to do the like again, — such are the essential conditions for the making of a people.

All history is incomprehensible without Christ.

The prayer of the agnostic: “O God, if there is a God, save my soul if I have a soul.”