I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

— Anatole France

I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

— Anatole France

Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.

— Anatole France

I sought out the laws which govern nature, solid or ethereal, and after much pondering I perceived that the Universe had not been formed as its pretended Creator would have us believe; I knew that all that exists, exists of itself and not by the caprice of Yahweh; that the world is itself its own creator and the spirit its own God. Henceforth, I despised Yahweh for his imposture, and I hated him because he showed himself to be opposed to all that I found desirable and good: liberty, curiosity, doubt.

— Anatole France

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

— Anatole France

It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.

— Anatole France

It is human nature to think wisely and to act in an absurd fashion.

— Anatole France

It is not customary to love what one has.

— Anatole France

It is possible that these millions of suns, along with thousands of millions more we cannot see, make up altogether but a globule of blood or lymph in the veins of an animal, of a minute insect, hatched in a world of whose vastness we can frame no conception, but which nevertheless would itself, in proportion to some other world, be no more than a speck of dust.

— Anatole France

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.

— Anatole France