Anatole France

Anatole France

Anatole France (originally Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault ) was born April 16, 1844 in Paris. A lifelong atheist, France was known for his anti-clericalism. France was a journalist, poet and writer whose breakthrough novel, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, 1881, centered around a skeptical scholar, perhaps modeled after the author himself. It was awarded a prize from the French Academy. France’s style, dry and ironic, was modeled in part on Voltaire, and influenced by the French Enlightenment. He wrote a highly critical treatise, The Church and the Republic, in 1905, and served as an honorary president of the French National Association of Freethinkers. Penguin Island (1908) is France’s irreverent tale about a nearsighted abbot who baptizes penguins by mistake. In The Revolt of Angels (1914), France revisits Milton’s „Paradise Lost.“ France depicted an angel leading a revolt after being influenced by the writings of Lucretius. With other writers, France came to the defense of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain falsely indicted for treason, and was a voice for reform. His collection of aphorisms is called The Garden of Epicurus. France was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1921. D. 1924.

——

“The thoughts of the gods are not more unchangeable than those of the men who interpret them. They advance–but they always lag behind the thoughts of men . . . . The Christian God was once a Jew. Now he is an anti-Semite.”
— Anatole France, letter to the Freethought Congress at Paris (1905), cited by Joseph McCabe, Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists

“The impotence of God is infinite.”
— Anatole France (French writer, 1844-1924), Under the Rose, 1925

“Men are given to worshipping malevolent gods, and that which is not cruel seems to them not worth their adoration.”
— Anatole France (1844-1924), Crainquebille, 1901

http://ffrf.org/day/?day=16&month=4#france