A man who has work that suits him and a wife, whom he loves, has squared his accounts with life.

Freedom is the fundamental character of the will, as weight is of matter... That which is free is the will. Will without freedom is an empty word.

Reason is just as cunning as she is powerful. Her cunning consists principally in her mediating activity, which, by causing objects to act and re-act on each other in accordance with their own nature, in this way, without any direct interference in the process, carries out reason's intentions.

Quite generally, the familiar, just because it is familiar, is not cognitively understood. The commonest way in which we deceive either ourselves or others about understanding is by assuming something as familiar, and accepting it on that account; with all its pros and cons, such knowing never gets anywhere, and it knows not why.... The analysis of an idea, as it used to be carried out, was, in fact, nothing else than ridding it of the form in which it had become familiar.

When individuals and nations have once got in their heads the abstract concept of full-blown liberty, there is nothing like it in its uncontrollable strength.

God is the absolute truth...

Whatever is reasonable is true, and whatever is true is reasonable