Those who do not hate their own selfishness and regard themselves as more important than the rest of the world are blind because the truth lies elsewhere

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

To find recreation in amusements is not happiness; for this joy springs from alien and extrinsic sources, and is therefore dependent upon and subject to interruption by a thousand accidents, which may minister inevitable affliction.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

Opinion is, as it were, the queen of the world, but force is its tyrant.

Nothing is surer than that the people will be weak.