But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.

A really intelligent man feels what other men only know.

Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry. She renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labor.

One more organ or one less in our body would give us a different intelligence. In fact, all the established laws as to why our body is a certain way would be different if our body were not that way.

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

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

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.