JEAN MESLIER

The last king should be strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

After taking advantage of the weakness, the credulity and the ignorance of the weakest and the most ignorant of the people, those sly, cunning politicians easily had them believe whatever they wanted. Consequently, they made them accept with respect and submission, willingly or not, all the laws they wanted to establish.

Since the strength of those kinds of tyrannical governments only subsist on the very principles and means that established them, and since it is dangerous to resist and struggle against the fundamentals of a religion, as well as to try and shake the fundamental laws of a state or a republic, one must not be astonished if the wise and enlightened people comply with the general laws of a state, unfair though they may be

Think hard about the reasons for believing and not believing, what your religion teaches you and demands so inexorably that you believe. I am convinced that if you follow closely the natural light of your spirit, you will see ... that all the religions in the world are only human inventions and that everything your religion teaches you and forces you to believe as supernatural and divine is at heart only error, lie, illusion and trickery.

If God is incomprehensible to man, it would seem rational never to think of Him at all …. whether there exists a God or not ... men's moral duties will always be the same so long as they possess their own nature

... inventions and purely human institutions.

To claim that the souls of men will be happy or unhappy after the death of the body, is to pretend that man will be able to see without eyes, to hear without ears, to taste without a palate, to smell without a nose, and to feel without hands and without skin. Nations who believe themselves very rational, adopt, nevertheless, such ideas.

Although it seems that religion and politics should be completely opposed and contradict each other in their principles and their maxims, they nevertheless get on very well, …they defend and support each other. Religion backs up the government, terrible though it may be; conversely, the government backs up religion, dumb and vain though it may be…. the priests … strongly recommend to everyone to obey magistrates, princes and sovereigns, as established by God to rule the others, under pain of curse and eternal damnation; …princes have their people pay respect to priests, and give those priests good salaries and revenues, and maintain them in the vain and abusive office of their fake ministry. They compel the people to regard as sacred and holy everything those ministers do … There again, this is the way abuses, errors, superstition, delusion and deceit have established themselves in the world, and how they remain in spite of all the misfortunes that they cause to the poor peoples…

If God is incomprehensible to man, it would seem rational never to think of Him at all.

The last king should be strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

If God is incomprehensible to man, it would seem rational never to think of Him at all …. whether there exists a God or not ... men's moral duties will always be the same so long as they possess their own nature

Although it seems that religion and politics should be completely opposed and contradict each other in their principles and their maxims, they nevertheless get on very well, …they defend and support each other. Religion backs up the government, terrible though it may be; conversely, the government backs up religion, dumb and vain though it may be…. the priests … strongly recommend to everyone to obey magistrates, princes and sovereigns, as established by God to rule the others, under pain of curse and eternal damnation; …princes have their people pay respect to priests, and give those priests good salaries and revenues, and maintain them in the vain and abusive office of their fake ministry. They compel the people to regard as sacred and holy everything those ministers do … There again, this is the way abuses, errors, superstition, delusion and deceit have established themselves in the world, and how they remain in spite of all the misfortunes that they cause to the poor peoples…

Since the strength of those kinds of tyrannical governments only subsist on the very principles and means that established them, and since it is dangerous to resist and struggle against the fundamentals of a religion, as well as to try and shake the fundamental laws of a state or a republic, one must not be astonished if the wise and enlightened people comply with the general laws of a state, unfair though they may be

After taking advantage of the weakness, the credulity and the ignorance of the weakest and the most ignorant of the people, those sly, cunning politicians easily had them believe whatever they wanted. Consequently, they made them accept with respect and submission, willingly or not, all the laws they wanted to establish.

... inventions and purely human institutions.

To claim that the souls of men will be happy or unhappy after the death of the body, is to pretend that man will be able to see without eyes, to hear without ears, to taste without a palate, to smell without a nose, and to feel without hands and without skin. Nations who believe themselves very rational, adopt, nevertheless, such ideas.

If God is incomprehensible to man, it would seem rational never to think of Him at all.

Think hard about the reasons for believing and not believing, what your religion teaches you and demands so inexorably that you believe. I am convinced that if you follow closely the natural light of your spirit, you will see ... that all the religions in the world are only human inventions and that everything your religion teaches you and forces you to believe as supernatural and divine is at heart only error, lie, illusion and trickery.