Lisez Euler, lisez Euler, c'est notre maître à tous. - Pierre-Simon Laplace

Lagrange, also present (or to whom Napoleon repeated Laplace's reply, in another version), then commented: "Ah ! C’est une belle hypothèse; ça explique beaucoup de choses."

All these efforts in the search for truth tend to lead it [the human mind] back continually to the vast intelligence... but from which it will always remain infinitely removed. This tendency peculiar to the human race is that which renders it superior... and their progress in this respect distinguishes nations and ages and constitutes their true glory.

Let us recall that formerly, and at no remote epoch... all the unusual phenomena were regarded as so many signs of celestial wrath.