The National Institute will be in a way the epitome of the world of learning, the representative body of the republic of letters, the honorable goal of all the ambitions of science and of talent, the most magnificent recompense of great effort and of outstanding success.

I have no hesitation in saying, after having recently seen the Academy of Sciences at its weekly labours, that it is the noblest and most effective institution that ever was organised for the promotion of science.

I was not mistaken with respect to the Academy of Sciences and the other academies founded on the same basis; they are bodies depending on the government and functioning by its orders…For thirty years not a single cog in the wheels of the Academy of Sciences has been worn out; it is the same system in operation; it turns around the same axis; the handle of the machine has often been changed but never the spring; it has outlived the downfall of all its masters. It has always … made the sounds required of it, stifling those which did not please it, raising up to the highest place an individual favoured by the government, even if he is an idiot.