Everyone has as much right as he has might.

I saw that all things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save insofar as the mind was affected by them.

The less the mind understands and the more things it perceives, the greater its power of feigning is; and the more things it understands, the more that power is diminished.

Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them.

There is no fear without some hope, and no hope without some fear.

Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.

In the state of nature, wrong-doing is impossible; or, if anyone does wrong, it is to himself, not to another. For no one by the law of nature is bound to please another, unless he chooses, nor to hold anything to be good or evil, but what he himself, according to his own temperament, pronounces to be so; and, to speak generally, nothing is forbidden by the law of nature, except what is beyond everyone's power.