The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition.

Statesman are suspected of plotting against mankind, rather than consulting their interests, and are esteemed more crafty than learned.

Love or hatred towards a thing, which we conceive to be free, must, other things being similar, be greater than if it were felt towards a thing acting by necessity.

The idea, which constitutes the actual being of the human mind, is not simple, but compounded of a great number of ideas.

Laws which can be broken without any wrong to one's neighbor are a laughing-stock; and such laws, instead of restraining the appetites and lusts of mankind, serve rather to heighten them. Nitimur in vetitum semper, cupimusque negata [we always resist prohibitions, and yearn for what is denied us].

Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.

Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things.