If an historian were to relate truthfully all the crimes, weaknesses, and disorders of mankind, his readers would take his work for satire rather than for history.

It is thus tolerance that is the source of peace, and intolerance that is the source of disorder and squabbling.

In matters of religion, it is very easy to deceive a man and very hard to undeceive him.

The antiquity and general acceptance of an opinion is not assurance of its truth.

There was no other God, religion, or lawful magistracy, than conscience, which teaches all men the precepts of Justice, to do no injury, to live honestly, and give everyone his due.

It is pure illusion to think that an opinion which passes down from century to century, from generation to generation, may not be entirely false.

No nations are more warlike than those which profess Christianity.

It is only common prejudice that induces us to believe that atheism is a fearful state.

Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.

I am a good Protestant, and in the full sense of the term, for from the bottom of my soul, I protest against everything that is said, and everything that is done.

I know too much to be a sceptic and too little to be a dogmatist.

As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.

Maybe this is how it happened first for everyone —adults promising us their own failed future.

Sensitive, responsive, eagerly welcomed everywhere, the drama, holding the mirror up to nature, by laughter and by tears reveals to mankind the world of men.

Architecture is a slow business, and city planning even slower.

Ask me not what I have, but what I am.

It's as easy to give away a million as a hundred if you have not got either.

Believe in the whisperings of God to your own heart.

That to me is the basic message of events like the rise of Nazism, the Salem witch trials, and so on: not that bad people do bad things, but that good people do bad things.

The film is made in the editing room.

Frankly, I’m suspicious of anyone who has a strong opinion on a complicated issue.