Afrikan Spir

"What is missing to our civilisation is the soul, the spiritual unity, the basis. That is why everything in it is pretence and contrivance; and why also, in spite of the progress and marvellous improvement they have accomplished in the external realm, men have, in general, become themselves neither better nor happier. They have neglected too much the essential; their own perfecting."

"If the abandonment of religious and moral principles was to become widespread, the consequences could be become such that we would finally see crop up in the very heart of civilisation, a new and apalling barbarism capable of engulfing all the acquisitions of the past."

"Grâce à la connaissance des lois physiques, l’homme a pu au dehors asservir la nature, mais, intérieurement, il en est resté l’esclave."

"In reality, there is no contradiction between science and religion, whose domains are distinct, and which, far from fighting and persecuting each other, must, on the contrary, complement each other."

"En sadonnant trop exclusivement à la recherche dun bonheur matériel, de biens éphémères, on méconnaît les vraies réalités dela vie et on laisse sétioler et se dessécher lesprit."

"The virtue preached by devout persons is the virtue of the slave who always believes themselves under the eye of the master. However, Jésus said: Serve God not as slaves, but as sons in the house"

"The social organization of work is the most complicated and difficult problem that humanity has ever had to solve. It being possible to realize this organization neither by violence, nor by merely external or legal measures, it requires the free participation of all to the common work, and, consequently, to a regeneration of men that brings them to overcome their selfishness and to understand their duty towards themselves and towards the community."

"It is not on the ruins of liberty that we may in the future build justice."

"The feeling of solidarity that is born amidst a community rests on the feeling of antagonism against those who are opposed to it. Most of the time we only adhere to a party or a group, in order to better differentiate ourselves from another."

"The more gifted by nature is a man, the more is deplorable the abuse that he does by using them to shameful ends. A swindler or crook of higher condition is more blameworthy than a vulgar scoundrel; an intelligent evil-doer, having benefited from a higher education, represents a more saddening phenomenon than an unfortunate illiterate fellow having committed an offence."

"If we accomplish a good deed, a charity in the hope of future rewards, or with a more or less admitted ulterior motive to profit from personal advantages, we are probably doing a useful thing, but which is devoid of any truly moral character."

"Men who have sacrificed their well-being, and even their lives, for the cause of truth or the public good, are, from an empirical point of view (which scorns virtue and altruism) regarded as insane or as fools; but, from a moral standpoint, they are heroes who honour humanity."