It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.

Men have their virtues and their vices, their heroisms and their perversities; men are neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but possess and practice all that there is of good and bad here below. Such is the general rule. Temperament, education, the accidents of life, are modifying factors. Outside of this, everything is ordered arrangement, everything is chance. Such has been my rule of expectation and it has usually brought me success.

When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out.

If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.

Music, of all the liberal arts, has the greatest influence over the passions, and it is that to which the legislator ought to give the greatest encouragement.

Let France have good mothers, and she will have good sons.

Republican despotism is more fertile in acts of tyranny, because everyone has a hand in it.