Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful.

A nation which thinks that it is belief in God and not good law which makes people honest does not seem to me very advanced.

To be born in imbecility, in the midst of pain and crisis; to be the plaything of ignorance, error, need, sickness, wickedness, and passions; to return step by step to imbecility, from the time of lisping to that of doting; to live among knaves and charlatans of all kinds; to die between one man who takes your pulse and another who troubles your head; never to know where you come from, why you come and where you are going! That is what is called the most important gift of our parents and nature. Life.

One must be oneself very little of a philosopher not to feel that the finest privilege of our reason consists in not believing in anything by the impulsion of a blind and mechanical instinct, and that it is to dishonour reason to put it in bonds as the Chaldeans did. Man is born to think for himself.

A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it... Skepticism is the first step toward truth.

There is only one duty; that is to be happy.

It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.