Distance is a great promoter of admiration.

My ideas are my whores.

The man who first pronounced the barbarous word God ought to have been immediately destroyed.

It seems to me that if one had kept silence up to now regarding religion, people would still be submerged in the most grotesque and dangerous superstition ... regarding government, we would still be groaning under the bonds of feudal government ... regarding morals, we would still be having to learn what is virtue and what is vice. To forbid all these discussions, the only ones worthy of occupying a good mind, is to perpetuate the reign of ignorance and barbarism.

When we know to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the heartsof others.

There is only one virtue, justice; only one duty, to be happy; only one corollary, not to overvalue life and not to fear death.

If your little savage were left to himself and be allowed to retain all his ignorance, he would in time join the infant's reasoning to the grown man's passion, he would strangle his father and sleep with his mother.