One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.
With men, the state of nature is not a state of peace, but war.
How then is perfection to be sought? Wherein lies our hope? In education, and in nothing else.
Everything in nature acts in conformity with law.
Notion without intuition is empty, intuition without notion is blind.
I feel a complete thirst for knowledge and an eager unrest to go further in it as well as satisfaction at every acquisition. There was a time when I believed that this alone could constitute the honor of mankind, and I had contempt for the ignorant rabble who know nothing.