Poverty, the existence of the poor, was the first cause of riches.

Where there is authority, there is no freedom.

But what right had I to these highest joys, when all around me was nothing but misery and struggle for a moldy bit of bread; when whatsoever I should spend to enable me to live in that world of higher emotions must needs be taken from the very mouths of those who grew the wheat and had not bread enough for their children?

The future cannot be legislated. All that can be done is to anticipate its most important movements and to clear the path for them.

The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror.

War is the usual condition of Europe.

The moral sense is a natural faculty in us like the sense of smell or of touch.