The culminating point of administration is to know well how much power, great or small, we ought to use in all circumstances.

Countries are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty.

Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance... the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.

Each particular society begins to feel its strength, whence arises a state of war between different nations.

A love of the republic in a democracy is a love of the democracy, as the latter is that of equality. A love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality. Since every individual ought here to enjoy the same happiness, and the same advantages, they should consequently taste the same pleasures and form the same hopes, which cannot be expected but from a general frugality.

Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.

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.