We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school-masters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.

When the savages of Louisiana wish to have fruit, they cut the tree at the bottom and gather the fruit. That is exactly a despotic government.

As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.

Honor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them; thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest.

The majority of men are more capable of great actions than of good ones.

A really intelligent man feels what other men only know.

The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.