Art for art's sake, with no purpose, for any purpose perverts art. But art achieves a purpose which is not its own. (1804)

The people who, in order to enjoy the liberty which suites them, resort to the representative system, must exercise an active and constant surveillance over their representatives, and reserve for themselves...the right to discard them if they betray their trust, and to revoke the powers which them might have abused.

There is a bizarre notion according to which it is claimed that because men are corrupt, it is necessary to give certain of them all the more power... on the contrary, they must be given less power.

Nearly always, so as to live at peace with ourselves, we disguise our own impotence and weakness as calculation and policy; it is our way of placating that half of our being which is in a sense a spectator of the other.

The great question in life is the suffering we cause, and the most ingenious metaphysics do not justify the man who has broken the heart that loved him.

Every time government attempts to handle our affairs, it costs more and the results are worse than if we had handled them ourselves.

There are things one does not say for a long time, but, once they are said, one never stops repeating them.