If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.

Tortures are a dangerous invention, and seem to be a test of endurance rather than of truth.

Learning must not only lodge with us: we must marry her.

Is it not a noble farce, wherein kings, republics, and emperors have for so many ages played their parts, and to which the whole vast universe serves for a theatre?

Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light; for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.

Socrates thought and so do I that the wisest theory about the gods is no theory at all.

From Obedience and submission comes all our virtues, and all sin is comes from self-opinion.