The spirit of commerce is frugality, economy, moderation, labor, ponderance, tranquillity, order, and rule. So long as this spirit subsides, the riches it produces have no bad effect. The mischief is when excessive wealth destroys the spirit of commerce, then it is that the conveniences of inequality... are felt.

What unhappy beings men are! They constantly waver between false hopes and silly fears, and instead of relying on reason they create monsters to frighten themselves with, and phantoms which lead them astray.

We ought to be very cautious and circumspect in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty.

In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them: experience has shown the error of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and of the persecution of those Christians in France whose belief differed a little from that of the king. They have realized that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfil its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it.

Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.