A people without superstition would be philosophical and philosophers will never obey. The people can be happy only if they are crushed, downtrodden, kept in chains.
[To Voltaire] Your first passion is love of humanity. That love blinds you. Love humanity, but you can only love it as it is. It is incapable of the benefits you would lavish upon it; and, giving them, you would only make it more unhappy and more wicked. Leave it the monster which devours it; the monster is dear to it. I never laughed so much as when I saw Don Quixote having a very hard time defending himself from the galley slaves to whom he had just magnanimously given their freedom.
Giacomo Casanova - History of my life (6, 10)
