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Civilization will not attain perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.
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Cited as attributed to Zola in The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations : Cutting Comments on Burning Issues (1992) by Charles Bufe, p. 183, but no earlier citation has yet been located, and this appears to be very similar to remarks often attributed to Denis Diderot: "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest" and "Let us strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest" — these are loosely derived from a statement Diderot actually did make: "his hands would plait the priest's entrails, for want of a rope, to strangle kings."
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This quote appeared in soviet popular-scientific work "Satellite atheist" (Sputnik ateista) (1959), p. 491.

 

Emile Zola

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