The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.

Chamfort’s epigram turns the biblical Flood into a mordant comment on human incorrigibility. If the first deluge failed to improve mankind, then repeating divine punishment would be pointless—suggesting that moral reform through catastrophe is an illusion. The line also implies a skeptical, Enlightenment-era stance toward providential narratives: history’s disasters do not reliably produce virtue, wisdom, or lasting change. In typical Chamfort fashion, the wit is barbed and compressed, using theological imagery to deliver a secular judgment on society’s persistence in folly and vice.