In this country [England] it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others. The reference is to Admiral John Byng, who was executed in 1757 for failing to prevent the French from taking Minorca.

History is a pack of lies we play on the dead.

If you want to know who controls you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize.

We’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good; we do the best we know.

If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal, nor the philosophical writings of Cicero.

Men are in general so tricky, so envious, and so cruel that when we find one who is only weak, we are too happy.

All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they may be equally free