'Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.

One weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants.

I don't know what the heart is, not I: I only use the word to denote the mind's frailties.

One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush.

Now I beg of you to tell me whether I must love a human being simply because he exists or resembles me and whether for those reasons alone I must suddenly prefer him to myself?

Nature, who for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her general equilibrium, has sometimes need of vices and sometimes of virtues, inspires now this impulse, now that one, in accordance with what she requires.

Never may an act of possession be exercised upon a free being; the exclusive possession of a woman is no less unjust than the possession of slaves; all men are born free, all have equal rights: never should we lose sight of those principles; according to which never may there be granted to one sex the legitimate right to lay monopolizing hands upon the other, and never may one of the sexes, or classes, arbitrarily possess the other.