Scrupulous people are not suited to great affairs.

If the land was divided among all the inhabitants of a country, so that each of them possessed precisely the quantity necessary for his support, and nothing more; it is evident that all of them being equal, no one would work for another. Neither would any of them possess wherewith to pay another for his labour, for each person having only such a quantity of land as was necessary to produce a subsistence, would consume all he should gather, and would not have any thing to give in exchange for the labour of others.

Gold and silver are constituted, by the nature of things, money, and universal money, independent of all convention, and of all laws.

The whole mass of humanity . . . marches constantly, though slowly, toward greater perfection.

What I admire in Columbus is not his having discovered a new world but his having gone to search for it on the faith of an opinion.

Every soil does not produce every material.

It is not error which opposes the progress of truth; it is indolence, obstinacy, the spirit of routine, every thing which favors inaction.