The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. No one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies.

Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil.

Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country.

Establish liberty on a rock of brass.

Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime.

To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.

Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular.