In their unshakeable determination to keep people in ignorance, theologians, together with their henchmen in government who are equally resolved to oppress them, make the gratuitous assumption that the great majority of people by reason of their purely mechanical, manual occupations are doomed to remain stupid. They imagine that artisans are incapable of reaching the level of understanding necessary to assert their rights as men and citizens. Wouldn't that lead you to think that such a level of understanding is extremely complicated? Yet if only one quarter of the time now devoted to numbing their powers of thought had been used to enlighten them and instead of stuffing their heads with an absurd catechism of incomprehensible metaphysics, they had been taught the basic principles of man's rights and of the duties based on those rights, we'd have been amazed to see how far they would have progressed along this path, which can be found in any decent elementary textbook. If, instead of preaching the doctrine of patience, suffering, abnegation and degradation, so helpful to usurpers, they had taught people how to recognize their rights and their duty to defend them, they would have recognized that nature, which has created man as a social animal, has supplied him with all the common sense required to form a society based on reason.

– Chamfort, Reflections and Anecdotes