What a hell of an economic system! Some are replete with everything while others, whose stomachs are no less demanding, whose hunger is just as recurrent, have nothing to bite on. The worst of it is the constrained posture need puts you in. The needy man does not walk like the rest; he skips, slithers, twists, crawls.

Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.

Does anyone really know where they're going to?

The enjoyment of freedom which could be exercised without any motivation would be the real hallmark of a maniac.

There is no true sovereign except the nation; there can be no true legislator except the people.

Scepticism is the first step toward truth.

What is this world? A complex whole, subject to endless revolutions. All these revolutions show a continual tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings who follow one another, press forward, and vanish; a fleeting symmetry; the order of a moment. I reproached you just now with estimating the perfection of things by your own capacity; and I might accuse you here of measuring its duration by the length of your own days.