Human laws made to direct the will ought to give precepts, and not counsels.

One more organ or one less in our body would give us a different intelligence. In fact, all the established laws as to why our body is a certain way would be different if our body were not that way.

This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.

Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.

In the birth of societies it is the chiefs of states who give it its special character; and afterward it is this special character that forms the chiefs of state.

With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such kind are moral truths.

Knowledge humanizes mankind, and reason inclines to mildness; but prejudices eradicate every tender disposition.