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.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

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.

Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words.

The wickedness of mankind makes it necessary for the law to suppose them better than they really are.

A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.

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.