Always treat people as ends in themselves, never as means to an end.

The more we come in contact with animals and observe their behaviour, the more we love them, for we see how great is their care of the young.

[A ruler is merely] the trustee of the rights of other men and he must always stand in dread of having in some way violated these rights.

To be beneficent when we can is a duty; and besides this, there are many minds so sympathetically constituted that, without any other motive of vanity or self-interest, they find a pleasure in spreading joy around them, and can take delight in the satisfaction of others so far as it is their own work. But I maintain that in such a case an action of this kind, however proper, however amiable it may be, has nevertheless no true moral worth, but is on a level with other inclinations. . . . For the maxim lacks the moral import, namely, that such actions be done from duty, not from inclination.

Give a man everything he wants and at that moment everything is not everything

If it were possible for us to have so deep an insight into a man's character as shown both in inner and in outer actions, that every, even the least, incentive to these actions and all external occasions which affect them were so known to us that his future conduct could be predicted with as great a certainty as the occurrence of a solar or lunar eclipse, we could nevertheless still assert that the man is free.

Humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites.