The mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be corrupt itself; and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active: the governor must be more energetic than the governed.

How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us, we devastate the world, we repopulate it with new objects which, in turn, we immolate. The means to every crime is ours, and we employ them all, we multiply the horror a hundredfold.

Fear not lest precautions and protective contrivances diminish your pleasure: mystery only adds thereto.

My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass: they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way.

The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.

It is not the opinions or the vices of private individuals that are harmful to the State, but rather the behavior of public figures.

Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.