I will say little of the importance of a good education; nor will I stop to prove that the current one is bad. Countless others have done so before me, and I do not like to fill a book with things everybody knows. I will note that for the longest time there has been nothing but a cry against the established practice without anyone taking it upon himself to propose a better one. The literature and the learning of our age tend much more to destruction than to edification.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.

Jewish authors would never have invented either that style nor that morality; and the Gospel has marks of truth so great, so striking, so utterly inimitable, that the invention of it would be more astonishing than the hero.

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.

There is a period in life when we go backwards as we advance.

The science of government is only a science of combinations, of applications, and of exceptions, according to times, places and circumstances.