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.

In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.

The falsification of history has done more to impede human development than any one thing known to mankind.

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them.

Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.

Usurpers always bring about or select troublous times to get passed, under cover of the public terror, destructive laws, which the people would never adopt in cold blood. The moment chosen is one of the surest means of distinguishing the work of the legislator from that of the tyrant.