The virtue of a human being is the application of his capacity to the general good.

Above all we should not forget, that government is an evil, an usurpation upon the private judgment and individual conscience of mankind.

Our judgment will always suspect those weapons that can be used with equal prospect of success on both sides.

I shall attempt to prove two things: first, that the actions and dispositions of mankind are the offspring of circumstances and events, and not of any original determination that they bring into the world; and, secondly, that the great stream of our voluntary actions essentially depends, not upon the direct and immediate impulses of sense, but upon the decisions of the understanding.

Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.

Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.

My thoughts will be taken up with the future or the past, with what is to come or what has been. Of the present there is necessarily no image.