Napoleon insisted, Andrew Roberts explains (in Napoleon: A Life), that priests charge no more than 6 francs for conducting the funerals of the poor:
‘We ought not to deprive the poor merely because they are poor of that which consoles their poverty,’ Napoleon said. ‘Religion is a kind of vaccination, which, by satisfying our natural love for the marvellous, keeps us out of the hands of charlatans and conjurors. The priests are better than the Cagliostros, the Kants, and all the visionaries of Germany.’
I’m reminded of the famous misattributed G.K. Chesterton quote: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.“
Interesting that the word vaccine appears to be very recent at that time. If Napoleon really used used it. Does the book in its notes have the original French?
I was delighted to see the quote footnoted — but it was not a citation, just an explanatory note:
The smallpox vaccine was introduced to France in 1800, and Napoleon strongly endorsed it, so it seems plausible that he would refer to it.
Lior Lefineder (@lefineder) found a source:
Cagliostro was Carlyle’s “Quack of Quacks”.
“Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable.” — The Philosopher’s Song, M. Python
And if anyone’s wondering, Hayao Miyazaki’s (feature) directorial debut, The Castle of Cagliostro, has roughly nothing to do with the quack of quacks.
Bonaparte really dissed Kant? Incredible….
In the modern terms, a placeholder. Much like British “monarchy”, but also useful as a ready fallback. Likewise, you don’t think Moscow is full of devoted Orthodox people, do you? It’s just something by and large decent (really ugly incidents are >30 years old). And as Russian proverb says, a holy place never sits empty.
Indeed. For future reference, Quote Investigator as usual gets a deeper look than plain search and the nearest similar quote. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2023/09/10/believe-anything/