Famous Sentences from the French Enlightenment Quiz

Answer: Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

In the 'Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge' (1746), Étienne Bonnot de Condillac is describing what he takes to be the fundamental method of human understanding: analysis. He is strongly influenced by John Locke, and he holds that all knowledge originates in sensation. For Condillac, the mind does not possess innate ideas; instead, it builds up all complex thinking from sensory impressions, gradually organized through comparison, association, and language. By treating thought as something that can be broken down, examined, and reconstructed, he contributes to the Enlightenment project of making a more scientific, methodical, and disciplined rational inquiry grounded in experience.

The original line reads, "J'ai dit que l'analyse est l'unique secret des découvertes : mais, demandera-t-on, quel est celui de l'analyse ? La liaison des idées...Toute la difficulté se borne à savoir comment on doit commencer pour saisir les idées selon leur plus grande liaison." - Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines (1746)

Answer: François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire)

This passage, in a Letter to Charles Gouju (1761), reflects Voltaire's sustained critique of institutional religion and scholastic theology, which he saw as systems of dogma that encouraged superstition, intolerance, and intellectual stagnation. Voltaire defended a rational, moral religion grounded in a minimal belief in God and natural ethics, while attacking religious institutions that claimed doctrinal authority or enforced orthodoxy. His target here is not spirituality itself, but the historical accumulation of theological systems that replaced reason with disputation and contributed to fanaticism and persecution.

"Il faut, mes frères, épurer la religion ; l'Europe entière le crie, et, pour l'épurer, ce n'est point par épurer la théologie qu'il faut commencer ; il faut l'abolir entièrement. Il est trop honteux d'avoir fait une science de cette grave folie qui n'a servi qu'à renverser des milliers de cervelles." - Voltaire, "Lettre de Charles Gouju a ses freres," Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire (1761)

Answer: Sylvain Maréchal

This passage from the 'Manifesto of the Equals' (1796), co-written by Sylvain Maréchal, articulates radical egalitarianism of the French Revolutionary period. He rejects not only aristocratic privilege but also the emerging bourgeois order that preserved inequality under new legal forms. For Maréchal, equality is not simply a political principle but a lived condition that must structure all of society. His thinking reflects a strand of Enlightenment materialist radicalism and the more extreme revolutionary currents influenced by thinkers such as Rousseau.

"De temps immémorial on nous répète avec hypocrisie, les hommes sont égaux, et de temps immémorial la plus avilissante comme la plus monstrueuse inégalité pèse insolemment sur le genre humain [...] Eh bien ! nous prétendons désormais vivre et mourir égaux comme nous sommes nés; nous voulons l'égalité réelle ou la mort ; voilà ce qu'il nous faut [...] Nous déclarons ne pouvoir souffrir davantage..." - Sylvain Maréchal, Le Manifeste des Égaux (1796).

Answer: Denis Diderot

The line was written by Denis Diderot, appearing in his poem 'Les Éleuthéromanes' (1772). It dramatizes the idea that political tyranny and religious authority are structurally linked and mutually reinforcing. Across his writings, Diderot often pushed Enlightenment critique further than many of his contemporaries, especially in his materialist and atheistic tendencies. Even when he uses poetry or satire, his aim is to destabilize inherited hierarchies and expose the contingency of political and religious power.

"Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre, Au défaut d'un cordon pour étrangler les rois." - Denis Diderot, Les Eleuthéromanes (1772)

Answer: François-Noël (Gracchus) Babeuf

François-Noël Babeuf was a proto-communist, revolutionary, and journalist of the French Revolutionary period. Babeuf represents the most extreme extension of egalitarian principles emerging from the French Revolution. While earlier Enlightenment thinkers emphasized natural rights and legal equality, Babeuf pushes these ideas toward economic restructuring as a necessary consequence. He argues that reason and justice require not only the critique of monarchy and privileges, but also the transformation of social and economic relations to match the principle of human equality.

"Dans une véritable société, il ne doit y avoir ni riches ni pauvres. Les riches qui ne veulent pas renoncer au superflu, en faveur des indigents, sont les ennemis du Peuple." - François-Noël Babeuf, L'Analyse de la doctrine de Babeuf, tribun du peuple, proscrit par le Directoire exécutif pour avoir dit la vérité (1796).

Answer: Maximilien de Robespierre

This a line from a 1793 speech delivered by Maximilien Robespierre before the National Assembly. Within Enlightenment thought, Robespierre occupies an ambivalent position. On one hand, he clearly embodies Enlightenment commitments to equality, popular sovereignty, and the critique of the Ancien Régime. On the other hand, his absolutizing of moral-political categories shows how Enlightenment ideals could be radicalized into revolutionary authoritarianism, revealing both the power and the dangers of Jacobinism.

"Il n'est que deux classes d'hommes, les amis de la liberté et de l'égalité, les défenseurs des opprimés, les amis de l'indigence et les fauteurs de l'opulence injuste et de l'aristocratie tyrannique." - Maximilien de Robespierre, OEuvres de Maximilien Robespierre, Tome IX, Seance du 8 Mai 1793.

Answer: Julien Offray de La Mettrie

In this famous and provocative statement from 'Man a Machine' (1748), Julien Offray de La Mettrie is pushing a radically materialist account of mind and body by reducing human nature entirely to matter and motion. The living body is in fact a machine, organized matter. Men, however much they may wish to exalt themselves, declared La Mettrie, are at bottom only animals and machines. This makes him a key figure in the development of modern materialism.

"Concluons donc hardiment que l'homme est une machine." - Julien Offray de La Mettrie, L'Homme Machine (1748)

Answer: Jean Meslier

Abbé Meslier was a Catholic priest who was discovered, upon his death, to have written an unpublished philosophical essay, posthumously titled 'Testaments' or the 'Memoir of the Thoughts and Sentiments of Jean Meslier', promoting atheism and materialism. He rejects religion entirely as a human fabrication designed to serve rulers and priests. Meslier was, arguably, the first secularist to publish an extensive, thorough, and detailed articulation of atheism. And this passage fits directly into Meslier's broader philosophy, which is one of the most radical forms of Enlightenment era thinking.

"Je dis qu'ils établissent partout un mistère d'iniquité ; parce que tous ces ressorts cachés de la plus fine politique, aussi bien que les maximes et les cérémonies les plus pieuses de la religion ne sont effectivement que des mistères d'iniquité." - Jean Meslier, Le Testament (1762).

Answer: Marquis de Sade

Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a writer, libertine, political activist, and nobleman best known for his obscene novels. Indeed, the word "sadism" derives from his fictional characters who take pleasure in inflicting pain on others. As this provocative line from 'Juliette, or Vice Amply Rewarded' (1797) suggests, nature's single precept is to take delight no matter at whose expense. This is because, Sade believes, pleasure (jouissance) is only the shock of voluptuous atoms (atomes voluptueux) emanating from voluptuous objects (d'objets voluptueux). Only the strongest excesses, the most terrible, most contradictory to divine and human laws (l'excès le plus fort, le plus exécrable, le plus contraire aux lois divines et humaines) will serve.

"[E]lle n'en imprime qu'une seule au coeur de tous les hommes, c'est de nous satisfaire... de ne rien refuser à nos passions, quelque chose qu'il puisse en coûter aux autres." - Marquis de Sade, L'histoire de Juliette (1797)

Answer: Olympe de Gouges

In 'The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen' (1791), Olympe de Gouges is here calling for a deep moral and social transformation centered on women's emancipation. The revolution she envisions is not only political in the narrow sense but also cultural and moral: a long-term transformation in attitudes, customs, and gender relations, making her a key figure in the early development of feminist political thought.

"On ne vous fera jamais un crime de travailler à la restauration des moeurs, à donner à votre sexe toute la consistance dont il est susceptible. Cet ouvrage n'est pas le travail d'un jour, malheureusement pour le nouveau régime. Cette révolution ne s'opérera que quand toutes les femmes seront pénétrées de leur déplorable sort, & des droits qu'elles ont perdus dans la société." - Olympe de Gouges. Les Droits de la femme (1791)

Answer: Emmerich de Vattel

Emer de Vattel argues that nations, like individuals, are free, independent, and equal, and therefore must judge their own duties according to their own conscience without external interference. In context, Vattel is laying out a foundational principle of modern international law: Sovereignty. Each State is understood as a self-governing moral and political unit, and no other State has the authority to act as judge over its internal decisions. Within Enlightenment thought, building on early modern thinkers like Hugo Grotius and Samuel von Pufendorf, Vattel represents its institutional and legal dimension.

"Les Nations étant libres, indépendantes, égales, et chacune devant juger en sa Conscience de ce qu'elle a à faire pour remplir ses devoirs il n'appartient ni à l'un ou à l'autre des intéressés, ni aux autres Nations de juger la question." - Emmerich de Vattel, Le Droit des gens, ou principes de la loi naturelle (1758)

Answer: Baron de Montesquieu

In the 'Spirit of the Laws' (1748), Montesquieu famously held that a society's customs, morals, laws, and even religion are deeply influenced by the physical environment, especially the climate. He sought to explain human behaviors, cultures, and thus political systems, using scientific (albeit dated) observations rather than just theology or abstract philosophy. By seeking natural and environmental explanations for laws and customs, he helps shift political thought away from theological or purely normative frameworks toward explanatory, observational, and analytic approaches that anticipate modern sociology and political science.

"L'autre tient uniquement aux moeurs, aux manières de la nation, aux lois du pays, à la morale, et quelquefois même à la religion. Elle est presque toujours l'effet de la force physique du climat, et elle est le remède de cette force physique." - Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Esprit des lois (1748)

Answer: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in the 'Social Contract' (1762), argued that inequality is not a natural feature of humanity but a product of society itself. Human beings in the state of nature are not inherently driven by vanity, domination, or competition; rather, these tendencies arise through social life, particularly through comparison with others, dependence, and the emergence of property. This idea lies at the center of Rousseau's broader philosophy. He occupies a distinctive place in the Enlightenment period.

"[C]e n'est point la l'état originel de l'homme, et que c'est le seul esprit de la société, et l'inégalité qu'elle engendre qui changent et alterent ainsi toutes nos inclinations naturelles." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social (1762)

Answer: Baron d'Holbach

Like many Enlightenment thinkers, Baron d'Holbach believes that ignorance sustains oppression and that education can liberate humanity. Since religion is viewed as a human invention rather than a source of truth, he argues, in the 'The System of Nature' (1770), that morality should be reconstructed on secular foundations grounded in reason and human interests. Ethical life becomes a matter of understanding the natural conditions of happiness and social cooperation.

"C'est dans les pays où la superstition a le plus de pouvoir que nous trouverons toujours le moins de moeurs. La vertu est incompatible avec l'ignorance, la superstition, l'esclavage..." - Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach, Système de la nature (1770)

Answer: Louis-Antoine Saint-Just

Louis-Antoine Saint-Just was a revolutionary Jacobin, political philosopher, and president of the French National Convention. Nicknamed "The Angel of Terror" for his ruthless pursuit of revolutionary purity and staunch defense of the Reign of Terror. This quoted passage neatly represents Saint-Just's political philosophy. Terror can rid us of monarchy and aristocracy, but, he asks, who will deliver us from corruption (qui nous délivrera de la corruption)? Institutions. We've done everything when we have a government machine (machine à gouvernement) which is the work of the people (l'ouvrage du peuple). He says, we must not allow the intensity of public morality (l'intensité de la morale publique) to diminish in its force against the wicked. The power of laws and reason (La puissance des lois et de la raison) comes next, everyone trembles without distinction.

The original line reads, "La justice condamne les ennemis du peuple et les partisans de la tyrannie parmi nous à un esclavage éternel. La terreur leur en laisse espérer la fin; car toutes les tempêtes finissent, et vous l'avez vu." - Louis-Antoine Saint-Just, Rapport sur les personnes incarcérées (1794)

Answer: Jean-Baptiste du Val-de-Grâce, Baron de Cloots

Jean-Baptiste du Val-de-Grâce a.k.a Anacharsis Cloots was a Prussian nobleman who was a significant figure in the French Revolution. He was a world federalist and an internationalist anarchist. He opposed national particularism and envisioned a world republic in which distinctions of nation, race, and colonial status would disappear before universal principles of liberty and equality. And this quoted statement reflects his belief that liberation cannot remain partial or confined within borders; true freedom must be universal. His thought radicalized revolutionary ideals by extending them beyond any single people or state. Within Enlightenment thought, Cloots strongly represents the movement's universalist aspirations.

"Mon système de la libération générale n'admet ni colonies, ni métropoles, ni différence de couleurs, ni différence de nations ; et je ne demande qu'un peu de prudence, un peu de politique pour arriver à ce but final de mes pensées." - Anacharsis Cloots, Ecrits révolutionnaires (1790-1794)

Answer: Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès

In his political pamphlet 'What is the Third Estate?' (1789), Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès discoursed that the Third Estate - the common people outside the clergy and nobility - constitutes the real substance of a nation. When he says it is 'everything,' he means that the Third Estate performs the labor, commerce, administration, and productive activity on which society depends. Yet politically it has been 'nothing,' excluded from meaningful power by the privileges of the traditional estates. Its demand to become 'something' is therefore a call for political recognition and participation proportionate to its actual importance in society. His thought helped redefine sovereignty by shifting its basis away from monarchy and aristocracy toward the people conceived as a nation.

"Qu'est-ce que le tiers état? Tout. Qu'a-t-il été jusqu'à présent dans l'ordre politique? Rien. Que demande-t-il? A y devenir quelque chose." - Abbé Sieyès, Qu'est-ce que le tiers état? (1789)

Answer: Nicolas de Condorcet

The 'Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind' (1795) by Nicolas de Condorcet expresses an optimistic vision of human history and future development. He is one of the clearest advocates of the doctrine of human perfectibility: the belief that there is no fixed limit to human moral and intellectual development. For Condorcet, inequality is not natural or permanent but the result of ignorance and unjust institutions, and it can be reduced through education, scientific knowledge, and institutional reform. Condorcet is one of its most explicit representatives of progressivism. Condorcet's writings were a key contribution to the French Enlightenment, particularly his work on the idea of progress.

"Nos espérances sur l'état à venir de l'espèce humaine, peuvent se réduire à ces trois points importans : la destruction de l'inégalité entre les nations ; les progrès de l'égalité dans un même peuple ; enfin, le perfectionnement réel de l'homme." - Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis of Condorcet, Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain (1794-1795)

Answer: Abbé de Mably

'Phocion's Conversations' (1763) was political and philosophical dialogue written by the French Enlightenment thinker Gabriel Bonnot de Mably. Even if land ownership were far more conducive to the reproduction of wealth than it actually is, he says, we should still prefer the community of goods. Because from disproportionate fortunes arises all the corruption of civil morals. This work was seen to contribute to the later concepts of both Communism and Republicanism. He advocated the abolition of private property, which he stated incompatible with sympathy and altruism, and conducive to one's antisociality or egotism.

"Dès que je vois la propriété foncière établie, je vois des fortunes inégales. Et, de ces fortunes disproportionnées, ne doit-il pas résulter des intérêts différents et opposés, tous les vices de la richesse, tous les vices de la pauvreté, l'abrutissement des esprits, la corruption des moeurs civiles et tous ces préjugés et ces passions..." - Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, Entretiens de Phocion sur le rapport de la morale et de la politique (1763)

Answer: Jean-Paul Marat

Jean-Paul Marat was a journalist and politician during the French Revolution. In this passage from 'The Chains of Slavery' (1774), Marat is warning readers about the dynamics of political domination:- how states slide into tyranny not only through sudden coups but through gradual erosion of civic vigilance, moral decay, and institutional manipulation. Liberty, for Marat, is not self-sustaining; it must be actively defended against those who seek to concentrate power. His thought combines republican ideals with a realist view of political power: without constant resistance, even initially free societies tend to drift toward oppression.

"Messieurs ! avec du désintéressement et du courage, un peuple peut toujours conserver sa liberté : mais une fois que ce trésor inestimable est perdu, il est presque impossible de le recouvrer." - Jean-Paul Marat, Les chaînes de l'esclavage (1774).

Answer: Henri de Saint-Simon

Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon created a political and economic ideology that claimed that the needs of an industrial class, the working class, needed to be recognized and fulfilled to have an effective society and an efficient economy. This line from 'Industry' (1817) nicely captures his train of thought. For him, society as it exists now is upside-down, with bureaucrats, lawyers, and the military at the top. He believes that artists, scientists and industrialists must unite under a socialism of producers. The body politic is seriously ill, he said, wherever the most unproductive class is in charge of the most productive one.

"La société tout entière repose sur l'industrie. L'industrie est la seule garantie de son existence, la source unique de toutes les richesses et de toutes les prospérités. L'état de choses le plus favorable à l'industrie est donc par cela seul le plus favorable à la Société." - Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, L'Industrie (1817)

Answer: François Quesnay

François Quesnay was an economist and physician of the Physiocratic school. This is a line from his 'General Maxims for the Economic Government of an Agricultural Kingdom' (1767). Quesnay represents the economy as a coherent domain of a systemic nature. This model conceives of the nation as a whole reduced to three major classes defined according to their economic function: the productive class is the class of farmers, which is the social group at the origin of the overall annual production since agriculture is the sole source of wealth; the property class is the group formed by the aristocracy, the sovereign, and the clergy who, without cultivating the land, annually appropriate the "net product" in the form of rent paid by the productive class; and finally the sterile class is represented by all the other groups, occupied with activities other than agriculture.

The original text reads: "Que le souverain et la nation ne perdent jamais de vue que la terre est l'unique source des richesses et que c'est l'agriculture qui les multiplie, car l'augmentation des richesses assure celle de la population ; les hommes et les richesses font prospérer l'agriculture, étendent le commerce, animent l'industrie." - François Quesnay, Maximes générales du gouvernement économique d'un royaume agricole (1767)

Answer: Louis de Jaucourt

Chevalier Louis de Jaucourt was a scholar and the most prolific contributor to the Encyclopedia (1751-1772), edited by Denis Diderot & Jean d'Alembert. In the entry on slavery, we read Jaucourt condemn slavery as not only an injustice to enslaved individuals but as a moral degradation of humanity as a whole. By grounding human dignity in nature rather than social status or legal convention, he exemplifies the Enlightenment effort to establish universal moral standards. This view elucidates Jaucourt's broader intellectual contribution as one of the most consistent moral voices of the Enlightenment against slavery. Although less famous than his contemporaries, he also wrote plenty against injustice, intolerance, and arbitrary authority.

"Tout nous crie qu'on ne peut lui ôter cette dignité naturelle, qui est la liberté, la regle du juste n'est pas fondée sur la puissance, mais sur ce qui est conforme à la nature ; l'esclavage n'est pas seulement un état humiliant pour celui qui le subit, mais pour l'humanité même qui est dégradée." - Louis de Jaucourt, "Esclavage," L'Encyclopédie V, 1st ed.(1751)

Answer: Joseph Marie Comte de Maistre

Within the intellectual landscape of the Enlightenment and its aftermath, Joseph de Maistre represents a sharp critique of Enlightenment rationalism. He views the French Revolution as a catastrophic example of what happens when political theory ignores historical continuity, tradition, and providential order. In 'Against Rousseau', De Maistre claims legitimate authority is not created by human reason but sanctioned by divine providence and embodied in institutions such as monarchy and the Church. History, then, is but a record of divine governance, revealing the consequences of human attempts to reorder society according to abstract principles.

"L'histoire est la politique expérimentale, c'est-à-dire la seule bonne ; [...] dans la science politique, nul système ne peut être admis s'il n'est pas le corollaire plus ou moins probable de faits bien attestés." - Joseph de Maistre, De la souveraineté du peuple Un anti-contrat social (1819)

Answer: Jean-Baptiste Say

Jean-Baptiste Say was a liberal economist and businessman who argued in favor of competition, free trade, and lifting restraints on business. In context, this line from 'A Treatise on Political Economy' (1803) displays the emergence of political economy as a modern discipline during and after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. For Say, economic phenomena are not arbitrary or purely political; they follow regular principles that can be discovered through observation and rational analysis. He is best known for Say's Law (the idea that supply creates its own demand in the long run), and for his attempt to present economics as a coherent, scientific system governed by natural laws.

Here's the original: "Maintenant on enseigne l'économie politique partout où l'on fait quelque cas des lumières...Mais ce qui a surtout contribué aux progrès de l'économie politique, ce sont les circonstances graves dans lesquelles le monde civilisé s'est trouvé enveloppé depuis quarante ans." - Jean-Baptiste Say, Traité d'économie politique (1803)