[Jesus and Mohammed]
L'Abbé: How could Christianity have established itself so high if it had nothing but fanaticism and fraud at its base?
Le Comte: And how did Mohammedanism establish itself. Mohammed at least could write and fight, and Jesus knew neither writing nor self-defence. Mohammed had the courage of Alexander, with the mind of Numa; and your Jesus, sweat, blood, and water. Mohammedanism has never changed, while you have changed your religion twenty times. There is more difference between it, as it is to-day, from what it was in the first ages, than there is between your customs and those of King Dagobert.—Le Diner du Comte de Boulainvilliers.
[How Faiths Spread]
But how do you think, then, that my religion became established? Like all the rest. A man of strong imagination made himself followed by some persons of weak imagination. The flock increased; fanaticism commences, fraud achieves. A powerful man comes; he sees a crowd, ready bridled and with a bit in its teeth; he mounts and leads it.—Dial, et entr. ph., Dialogue 19.
[Superstition]
The superstitious man is to the knave what the slave is to the tyrant; nay, further, the superstitious man is governed by the fanatic, and becomes one.—Dict. Phil. (Art. “Superstition”).
[The Bible]
If there are many difficulties we cannot solve, mysteries we cannot comprehend, adventures which we cannot credit, prodigies which display the credulity of the human mind, and contradictions which it is impossible to reconcile, it is in order to exercise our faith and to-humiliate our reason.—Dict. Phil. (Art. “Contradictions”).