Hosts of merchants encumber the cities, and the streets are cluttered with solicitors who swarm without limit or purpose.

Any civilized administration, however organized, prefers its own good to that of the people.

Despots prefer the friendship of the dog, who, unjustly mistreated and debased, still loves and serves the man who wronged him.

Certainly in each social period, youth must be made to venerate the dominant absurdities.

...commerce, which is mistakenly classified among the productive forms of work, ought to be ranked first among the parasitical professions like those of monk, soldier, lawyer etc.

It is known that the best nations have always been those which concede the greatest amount of liberty to women.

The Civilized… murder their children by producing too many of them without being able to provide for their well-being. Morality or theories of false virtue stimulate them to manufacture cannon fodder, anthills of conscripts who are forced to sell themselves out of poverty. This improvident paternity is a false virtue, the selfishness of pleasure.