oltaire

Ladies and Gentlemen: The infidels of one age have often been the
aureoled saints of the next.

The destroyers of the old are the creators of the new. As time sweeps
on the old passes away and the new in its turn becomes of old.

There is in the intellectual world, as in the physical, decay and
growth, and ever by the grave of buried age stand youth and joy.

The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of
infidels.

Political rights have been preserved by traitors; the liberty of mind
by heretics.

To attack the king was treason; to dispute the priest was blasphemy.

For many years the sword and cross were allies. Together they attacked
the rights of man. They defended each other.

The throne and altar were twins--two vultures from the same egg.

James I said: "No bishop; no king." He might have added: No cross,
no crown. The king owned the bodies of men; the priest, the souls. One
lived on taxes collected by force, the other on alms collected by
fear--both robbers, both beggars.

These robbers and these beggars controlled two worlds. The king made
laws, the priest made creeds. Both obtained their authority from God,
both were the agents of the infinite. With bowed backs the people
carried the burdens of one, and with wonder's open mouth received the
dogmas of the other. If the people aspired to be free, they were
crushed by the king, and every priest was a Herod, who slaughtered the
children of the brain.

The king ruled by force, the priest by fear, and both by both. The king
said to the people: "God made you peasants, and He made me king; He
made you to labor, and me to enjoy; He made rags and hovels for you,
robes and palaces for me. He made you to obey and me to command. Such
is the justice of God," And the priest said: "God made you ignorant
and vile; He made me holy and wise; you are the sheep, I am the
shepherd; your fleeces belong to me. If you do not obey me here, God
will punish you now and torment you forever in another world. Such is
the mercy of God."

"You must not reason. Reason is a rebel. You must not
contradict--contradiction is born of egotism; you must believe. He that
has ears to hear let him hear. Heaven is a question of ears."

Fortunately for us, there have been traitors and there have been
heretics, blasphemers, thinkers, investigators, lovers of liberty, men
of genius, who have given their lives to better the condition of their