“Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. In this sense all beings have their laws: the Deity His laws, the material world its laws, the intelligences superior to man their laws, the beasts their laws, man his laws.”

There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.

Vitam Impendere Vero (I consecrate my life to truth).

Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.

As soon as man enters into a state of society he loses the sense of his weakness; equality ceases, and then commences the state of war.

The coffee is prepared in such a way that it makes those who drink it witty: at least there is not a single soul who, on quitting the house, does not believe himself four times wittier that when he entered it.

Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments.

The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear.

There is no nation so powerful, as the one that obeys its laws not from principals of fear or reason, but from passion.

Injustice towards others is a threat to everybody

I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.

The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.

In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.

The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions.

Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

I should like to abolish funerals; the time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.