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.

The completest submissiveness is your lot, and that is all.

The majority of pop stars are complete idiots in every respect.

Happiness is an abstraction, it is a product of the imagination, it is a way of being moved, which depends entirely on our way of seeing and feeling.

What is more immoral than war?

Crime is to the passions what nervous fluid is to life: it sustains them, it supplies their strength.

Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.