It is rare to find learned men who are clean, do not stink and have a sense of humour.

There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.

If I knew something that would serve my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it; for I am a citizen of humanity first and by necessity, and a citizen of France second, and only by accident

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.

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.

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.

There should be weeping at a man's birth, not at his death.