This spirit of freedom is expanding even where it must struggle against the external obstacles of governments that misunderstand their own function. Such governments are illuminated by the example that the existence of freedom need not give cause for the least concern regarding public order and harmony in the commonwealth. If only they refrain from inventing artifices to keep themselves in it, men will gradually raise themselves from barbarism.

Beauty presents an indeterminate concept of Understanding, the sublime an indeterminate concept of Reason.

Patience is the strength of the weak, impatience is the weakness of the strong.

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

With men, the state of nature is not a state of peace, but war.

The death of dogma is the birth of morality.

The instruction of children should aim gradually to combine knowing and doing. Among all sciences mathematics seems to be the only one of a kind to satisfy this aim most completely.