His reputation will go on increasing because scarcely anyone reads him.

All men would then be necessarily equal, if they were without needs. It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.

Virtue supposes liberty, as the carrying of a burden supposes active force. Under coercion there is no virtue, and without virtue there is no religion. Make a slave of me, and I shall be no better for it. Even the sovereign has no right to use coercion to lead men to religion, which by its nature supposes choice and liberty. My thought is no more subject to authority than is sickness or health.

Divorce is probably of nearly the same age as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.

It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.

Nothing is so common as to imitate one's enemies, and to use their weapons.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.

The adjective is the enemy of the substantive.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Money is always to be found when men are to be sent to the frontiers to be destroyed: when the object is to preserve them, it is no longer so.

What a pity and what a poverty of spirit, to assert that beasts are machines deprived of knowledge and sentiment, which affect all their operations in the same manner, which learn nothing, never improve, &c. [...] Some barbarians seize this dog, who so prodigiously excels man in friendship, they nail him to a table, and dissect him living, to show the mezarian veins. You discover in him all the same organs of sentiment which are in yourself. Answer me, machinist, has nature arranged all the springs of sentiment in this animal that he should not feel? Has he nerves to be incapable of suffering? Do not suppose this impertinent contradiction in nature. [...] The animal has received those of sentiment, memory, and a certain number of ideas. Who has bestowed these gifts, who has given these faculties? He who has made the herb of the field to grow, and who makes the earth gravitate towards the sun.

The institution of religion exists only to keep mankind in order, and to make men merit the goodness of God by their virtue. Everything in a religion which does not tend towards this goal must be considered foreign or dangerous.

Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.

Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.

Virtuous men alone possess friends.

If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones.

Define your terms, you will permit me again to say, or we shall never understand one another.

Prejudice is an opinion without judgement.

A testimony is sufficient when it rests on: 1st. A great number of very sensible witnesses who agree in having seen well. 2d. Who are sane, bodily and mentally. 3d. Who are impartial and disinterested. 4th. Who unanimously agree. 5th. Who solemnly certify to the fact.

What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.

A company of solemn tyrants is impervious to all seductions.

It is better to risk sparing a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

The first who was king was a fortunate soldier: Who serves his country well has no need of ancestors.

May we not return to those scoundrels of old, the illustrious founders of superstition and fanaticism, who first took the knife from the altar to make victims of those who refused to be their disciples?

A single part of physics occupies the lives of many men, and often leaves them dying in uncertainty.

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.

Use, do not abuse; as the wise man commands. I flee Epictetus and Petronius alike. Neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

To pray to God is to flatter oneself that with words one can alter nature.

We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.

If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.

It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.

A minister of state is excusable for the harm he does when the helm of government has forced his hand in a storm; but in the calm he is guilty of all the good he does not do.

A people that sells its own children is more condemnable than the buyer; this commerce demonstrates our superiority; he who gives himself a master was born to have one.

I have received, sir, your new book against the human species, and I thank you for it. You will please people by your manner of telling them the truth about themselves, but you will not alter them. The horrors of that human society-from which in our feebleness and ignorance we expect so many consolations-have never been painted in more striking colours: no one has ever been so witty as you are in trying to turn us into brutes: to read your book makes one long to go on all fours. Since, however, it is now some sixty years since I gave up the practice, I feel that it is unfortunately impossible for me to resume it: I leave this natural habit to those more fit for it than are you and I.

This body which called itself and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

It is the privilege of true genius, and certainly of the genius that opens a new road, to make without punishment great mistakes.

Love truth, but pardon error.

Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.

Virtue is debased by self-justification.

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

We should be considerate to the living; to the dead we owe only the truth.

Quite a heavy weight, a name too quickly famous.

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

Life is just a notebook with blank pages. Every time we make a mistake, the pages get stained and living in it becomes impossible.

Man is free at the instant he wants to be.