For a country, everything will be lost when the jobs of an economist and a banker become highly respected professions.

When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.

The laws do not take upon them to punish any other than overt acts.

Love of reading enables a man to exchange the weary hours, which come to every one, for hours of delight.

The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.

Very good laws may be ill timed.

If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman... because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.