Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free.

Every country has the government it deserves.

War is thus divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular. War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it. War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.

What is needed is not a revolution in the opposite direction, but the opposite of a revolution.

It is not the mediocrity of women's education which makes their weakness; it is their weakness which necessarily causes their mediocrity.

False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.

All grandeur, all power, and all subordination to authority rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears.