The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.

Ever since the invention of gunpowder.. I continually tremble lest men should, in the end, uncover some secret which would provide a short way of abolishing mankind, of annihilating peoples and nations in their entirety.

The state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.

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

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.

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

There are bad examples which are worse than crimes; and more states have perished from the violation of morality than from the violation of law.