All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of menб that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men's thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden... He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it.

The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.

.... we are a part of nature as a whole, whose order we follow.

I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes and solids.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods.

Everyone has as much right as he has might.