Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.

Something is wanting to science until it has been humanised.

When a man says to me, "I have the intensest love of nature," at once I know that he has none.

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

The worthless and offensive members of society, whose existence is a social pest, invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries.

But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and notlead the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it.

Revolutions go not backward.