Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

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.

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.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.

Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.