To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.

At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Let them eat cake".

I hate books; they only teach people to talk about what they don't understand.

Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and far from commanding we are forced to obey it.

The French painter Rousseau was once asked why he put a naked woman on a red sofa in the middle of his jungle pictures. He answered, 'I needed a bit of red there.'

Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

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