Do you want to make it impossible for anyone to oppress his fellow-man? Then make sure that no one shall possess power.

He who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.

[Jehovah is] certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty.

This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only to destroy each other.

Intellectual slavery, of whatever nature it may be, will always have as a natural result both political and social slavery.

Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker.

I feel myself always the patriot of all oppressed fatherlands. Nationality is a historic, local fact which, like all real and harmless facts, has the right to claim general acceptance. Every people, like every person, is involuntarily that which it is and therefore has a right to be itself. Nationality is not a principle; it is a legitimate fact, just as individuality is. Every nationality, great or small, has the incontestable right to be itself, to live according to its own nature. This right is simply the corollary of the general principal of freedom.