The wish to talk to God is absurd. We cannot talk to one we cannot comprehend — and we cannot comprehend God; we can only believe in Him.

If justice perishes, human life on Earth has lost its meaning.

If we could see ourselves... as we really are, we should see ourselves in a world of spiritual natures, our community which neither began at birth nor will end with the death of the body.

No state at war with another state should engage in hostilities of such a kind as to render mutual confidence impossible when peace will have been made.

There is something splendid about innocence; but what is bad about it, in turn, is that it cannot protect itself very well and is easily seduced.

[S]uppose the mind of [a] friend of humanity were clouded over with his own grief, extinguishing all sympathetic participation in the fate of others; he still has the resources to be beneficent to those suffering distress, but the distress of others does not touch him because he is sufficiently busy with his own; and now, where no inclination any longer stimulates him to it, he tears himself out of his deadly insensibility and does the action without any inclination, solely from duty.

Standing armies shall in time be totally abolished.