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Atheism can benefit no class of people; neither the unfortunate, whom it bereaves of hope, nor the prosperous, whose joys it renders insipid, nor the soldier, of whom it makes a coward, nor the woman whose beauty and sensibility it mars, nor the mother, who has a son to lose, nor the rulers of men, who have no surer pledge of the fidelity of their subjects than religion.

— François-René de Chateaubriand The Genius of Christianity (1802)

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More quotes by François-René de Chateaubriand

I am Bourbon as a matter of honour, royalist according to reason and conviction, and republican by taste and character.

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The original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.

As soon as a true thought has entered our mind, it gives a light which makes us see a crowd of other objects which we have never perceived before.

In living literature no person is a competent judge but of works written in his own language.

I have explored the seas of the Old World and the New, and trodden the soil of the four quarters of the Earth.

Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848)

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Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.

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Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification.

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One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love — to serve the loved one without his knowing it — is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.

Simone Weil Last Notebook (1942)

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

John C. Lilly The Human Biocomputer (1974)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: François-René de Chateaubriand (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.