The Cult of Reason and the Cult of the Supreme Being

March 12, 2026 Mike Zonta Leave a comment

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The Cult of the Supreme Being was a short-lived state-sponsored religion during the French Revolution, created in 1794 by Maximilien Robespierre.

Why it was created

Robespierre thought the earlier Cult of Reason had gone too far in attacking religion and promoting atheism.
He believed society needed some form of belief in a higher moral power to keep virtue and civic responsibility alive.

So he proposed a new idea:

There is a higher power (“the Supreme Being”)
The human soul is immortal
Virtue and republican morality should guide citizens
Religion should support the French Republic, not the Catholic Church.

It was meant to be a deistic religion—more like the philosophy of Jean‑Jacques Rousseau, who argued that societies need a “civil religion.”

The big public festival

The cult’s most famous event was the Festival of the Supreme Being on June 8, 1794.

Huge crowds gathered in Champ de Mars.
Robespierre led a grand procession.
An enormous statue symbolizing Atheism was burned.
Another statue representing Wisdom or the Supreme Being was revealed.

The ceremony was elaborate, almost like a theatrical civic ritual.

Why it ended

The cult lasted only a few weeks.

Many revolutionaries already distrusted Robespierre and thought the ceremony made him look like a high priest or dictator. Shortly afterward:

Robespierre was overthrown and executed during the Thermidorian Reaction.

After his fall, the Cult of the Supreme Being quickly disappeared.

✅ In short: it was an attempt to create a moral, civic religion for the French Republic—neither Catholic nor atheist—but it died with Robespierre.

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Quotes

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“Under and behind the universed of time, space and change is a fundamental reality.”
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“[Diabolic] comes from the Greek word diabolos; ‘diabolic’ is the term in contemporary English. Diabolos, interestingly enough, literally means ‘to tear apart’ (dia-bollein). Now it is fascinating to note that this diabolic is the antonym of ‘symbolic.’ The later comes from sym-bollein, which means ‘to throw together,’ to unite. There lie in these words tremendous implications with respect to an ontology of good and evil. The symbolic is that which draws together, ties, integrates the individual in himself and with his group; the diabolic, in contrast, is that which disintegrates and tears apart. Both of these are present in the daimonic.”
―Rollo May, Love and Will

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“[T]herefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.”
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–French proverb

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“We cannot go to our self by discipline or effort; we go there by love and surrender.”
–Rupert Spira

“And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.”
–Luke 18:19 (King James version)

“Therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.”
–Job 42:3

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–Eric Wargo

“When the Real Self speaks, the body listens.”
–Jacob Needleman

“To begin with, we seem to be in the world, then the world seems to be in us, and finally the distinction between our self and the world dissolves.”
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–Albert Einstein

“Sexuality is something you let in. It’s not something you let out.”
–Thane of Hawaii

“Abbreviation for Infinite Mind: I.M. Abbreviation for Infinite Consciousness: I.C. Abbreviation for Infinite Being: I.B.”
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–Walter Lanyon in London Notes and Lectures

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“Truth is that which is so, and that’s all you need to know.”
–Janet Cornwell, H.W., m.

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–Calvin Harris, H.W., M.

“There is no center to infinity.”
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–Janet Cornwell, H.W., m.

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–Emily Dickenson

“It’s not enough for a woman to be pregnant.
At some point she’s got to give birth.”
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–Suzanne Deakins, H.W., M.

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–Thane of Hawaii

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–Richard Branam

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–Terence McKenna

“A word after a word after a word is power.”
–Margaret Atwood

“You have to fall in love with hanging around words.”
–John Ciardi

“Energy is primary. Personification is secondary.”
–Joseph Campbell

“Everything is connected. Everything has meaning.”
–Thane of Hawaii

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–Christian Morgenstern, German poet

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–Gottfried Leibniz

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–Richard Branam

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–Ben Gilberti, H.W., M.

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“Truth is in the constant process of renewing Itself.”
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“Translation is comfort food for the soul.”
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–Anais Nin

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“Let’s undo each other.”
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“Truth is not a zero-sum game.”
–Michael Kelly

“There is no Supreme Being. There is only Being. And we are all that Being.”
–Mike Zonta, BB editor

“The Universe loves it when we Translate.”
–Richard Branam

“Translation is ‘magical thinking’ based on self-evident axioms and syllogistic reasoning (which is to say that Translation is not magical thinking at all).”
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–Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

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–George Bernard Shaw

“Minds are like parachutes: they only function when open.”
–Thomas Dewar, First Baron Dewar (Yes, that Dewar…)

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–Krishnamurti

“Belief in ego is the Antichrist.”
–Mike Zonta, BB editor

“Love is the perfume of Truth.”
–Robert McEwen, H.W., M.

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–Taigen Dan Leighton.

“Anger is traditionally thought to be close to wisdom. When not projected outward onto others or inward toward the self, it gives us the necessary energy and clarity to understand what needs to be done.”
–Thanissara Mary Weinberg.

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–Mike Zonta, BB editor

“Truth moves at the speed of now.”
–Mike Zonta, BB editor

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– Charles Lamb

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– Rainer Maria Rilke

“Everything has been figured out, except how to live.”
– Jean-Paul Sartre

“Show up. Dive in. Keep at it.”
– Barack Obama

“Give me some TRUTH!”
–Seen on a bumper sticker in Redondo Beach, CA

“At times I think and at times I am.”
–Paul Valéry

“I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth – and truth rewarded me.”
–Simone de Beauvoir

“The Cosmic Intention is to evolve from a thing to a think.”
–Melissa Goodnight, H.W., M.

“It is so respectful to not get involved in somebody else’s angst.”
–Hanz Bolen, H.W., M.

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
–Leonard Cohen, from his song “Anthem”

“Handsome is as handsome does.”
–Proverb

“If you are not admiring a young man, you are abusing him.”
–Robert Graves

“Voting is a spiritual activity.”
–Mike Zonta, BB editor

“[B]y man came death. [By God comes life].”
–I Corinthians 15:21

“The inner children of the past shut up when you listen to them.”
–paraphrasing Hanz Bolen, H.W., M.

“It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”
–R.W. Emerson

“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”
–Mother Teresa

“Loneliness is the poverty of self, solitude is the richness of self.”
–May Sarton

“Nothing that you lose is real. Nothing that is real can ever be lost.”
–Al Haferkamp, H.W., M.

“Man will not be satisfied until he is everywhere equally present.”
–Al Haferkamp, H.W., M.

“Human consciousness is how the universe understands itself.”
–Joe Ciriello, H.W., m

“Gravity is a matter of interest.”
–Brian Wallenstein, H.W., d.

“There is NO gender to art.”
–Brian Wallenstein, H.W., d.

“What was once invention is now convention.”
–Brian Wallenstein, H.W., d.

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on, but once it gets its pants on, watch out!!!”
–Sir Winston Churchill as revised by Mike Zonta, BB editor

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–Philo of Alexandria

“You can’t change your shoes while you’re standing in them.”
–Hanz Bolen, H.W., M.

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“If it’s an essential mission, God sends a team.”
–Hanz Bolen, H.W., M.

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–Roland Campos

“Handsome is a sort of kindness.”
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“My experiences are temporary, but Truth is eternal”.
–Bulent Tokgoz

“It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.”
–Buddha

“Translation [and Releasing the Hidden Splendour] is a form of worship.”
–Melissa Derfler and the online FYL group

“Never think of results, just do!”
–Gurdjieff

“The ear longs to hear what the heart already knows.”
–Anonymous

“Occupy Yourself!”
–David Wilcox

“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”
–Raaj Sharma

“Curb your God.”
–bumper sticker

“When I create art, it’s like holding hands with God.”
–Robert Mapplethorpe

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will truly know peace.”
–Sri Chinmoy Ghose

“I’m the one that has to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.”
–Jimi Hendrix

“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”
–Mark Twain

“My heart is like a toilet door! There are names marked all over it.”
–from the French film “Toi and Moi”.

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
–Mark Twain

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
–Henry David Thoreau

“The mind loves truth and so does the body.”
–Christine

“I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.”
–Aldous Huxley

“There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in your heart.”
— Chandogya Upanishad

“Love believes all things and yet is never deceived.”
–Soren Kierkegaard

“My life is not mine.”
–Rumi

“Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage.”
–William S. Burroughs

“Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure.”
–Rainer Maria Rilke

“Everyone has got some preconceptions, but you have to readjust them in front of reality. Reality has the last word.”
–Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Love? What is it? Most natural pain killer what there is. LOVE.”
–William S. Burrough’s final journal entry

“We acquire the strength we have overcome.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I am all other men.”
–Schopenhauer

“Man is, that he might have joy.”
–Joseph Smith

“To the man who can perfectly practice inaction, all things are possible.”
–Ernest Holmes in Science of Mind

“People will forget what you say, but they will never forget how you make them feel.”
–Tom Asacker

“We have a right to know the truth; no right to ask anything else from God, but the right to know that.”
— J.M. Barrie in Tommy and Grizel

“If you don’t believe in something greater than yourself, you’ll never do anything greater than yourself.”
–nun on Oprah

“Boredom is the child of self-centeredness.”
–The Grand Lizard Andrews

“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.”
–Robert Louis Stevenson

“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that your life could have been any different.”
–Oprah

“When I was born I was so surprised I didn’t talk for a year and a half.”
–Gracie Allen

“Don’t look at me like I’ve gotten old or something like that.”
–Clint Eastwood

“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
–Martin Luther King Jr.

“Peace is not something you wish for; it’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away”
–Robert Fulghum

“I REFUSE to participate in a recession.”
–bumper sticker

“We believe . . . different from Wall Street. We believe customer No. 1, employee No. 2, and shareholder No. 3. This is my religion.”
–Jack Ma, Alibaba Group

“Fear is a choice.”
–Kurtis Matthews, San Francisco Comedy College

“Don’t Believe Everything You Think”
–bumper sticker

“One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.”
–Joseph Campbell

“When people asked [Jacques Cousteau], ‘Well, Captain, what do you expect to find?’ he always said, ‘If I knew, I wouldn’t go.’”
–Jean-Michel Cousteau, his son

“Let life happen to you. Life is in the right, always.”
–Rainer Maria Rilke

“And, as [Picasso] said, at the end of his life, he was in dialogue with the old masters, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Rubens. He thought he was talking to them and that they were talking back to him through his art.”
–Gary Tinterow, The Met, New York

“The world breaks everyone but afterwards many are strong at the broken places.”
–Ernest Hemingway

“Inside every head is a different world.”
–skateboarder in San Francisco

“Thank God our time is now, when wrong comes up to meet us everywhere, never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul men ever took.”
–Christopher Fry

“If you’re neurotic and you think, I’m not where I deserve to be or my mother didn’t love me, or blah, blah, blah, that lie, that neurotic vision, takes over your life and you’re plagued by it ’til it’s cleansed. In a play, at the end of the play, the lie is revealed. [T]he better the play is, the more surprising and inevitable the lie is, as Aristotle told us. Plays are about lies.”
–David Mamet

“If you want to be a writer, you don’t want to live in a comfortable place.”
–Benjamin Alire Saenz

“And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
–Anais Nin

“Often people think that it’s a question of adrenaline, [that] it’s an adrenaline addiction. I think what they are addicted to essentially is brotherhood. It’s a very healthy impulse that is taking place in a very unhealthy place.”
–Sebastian Junger on troops in combat

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
–William Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“Love well, be loved and do something of value.”
–Aristotle

“Tread softly upon the earth because the faces of the unborn look up at you.”
–James Cameron quoting Brazilian tribal saying

“You don’t attract what you want. You attract what you are.”
–Wayne Dyer

“We will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in.”
–Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi

“Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.”
–J.D. Salinger

“If things don’t seem out of control, you’re not going fast enough.”
— Mario Andretti

“We see things not as they are, but as we are.”
— Anais Nin

“A change in the weather is sufficient to re-create the world and ourselves.”
— Marcel Proust

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
— George Bernard Shaw

“. . . the only difference between you and God is that you have forgotten that you are divine.”
— Peter Solomon in The Lost Symbol

“Have an open-mind, but don’t let your brains fall out.”
— Jacob Needleman

“When thought races ahead of Being, a civilization is racing towards destruction.”
— Jacob Needleman in his new book What is God?

“A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it.”
— G.K. Chesterton

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only at night.”
— Edgar Allan Poe

“Give thanks to unknown blessings already on their way.”
— Native American proverb at cafe in San Francisco

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
–e.e. cummings

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