We should seek the truth without hesitation; and, if we refuse it, we show that we value the esteem of men more than the search for truth.

It is not in Montaigne, but in myself, that I find all that I see in him.

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

There are two excesses: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason. The supreme achievement of reason is to realise that there is a limit to reason. Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realise that.

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.

When I consider the small span of my life absorbed in the eternity of all time, or the small part of space which I can touch or see engulfed by the infinite immensity of spaces that I know not and that know me not, I am frightened and astonished to see myself here instead of there … now instead of then.