One must choose between making a man or a citizen, for one cannot make both at the same time.

The empire of woman is an empire of softness, of address, of complacency. Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears.

If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

And when the relics of humanity left among the Spaniards induced them to forbid their lawyers to set foot in America, what must they have thought of jurisprudence? May it not be said that they thought, by this single expedient, to make reparation for all the outrages they had committed against the unhappy Indians?

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.