“You have to study a great deal to know a little.”

They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings.

Vanity and pride of nations; vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous.

It is always the adventurous who accomplish great things.

It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.

We ought to be very cautious and circumspect in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty.

Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.

Christianity stamped its character on jurisprudence; for empire has ever a connection with the priesthood.

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary act, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the Atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without those rules, since without them it could not subsist.

Passion makes us feel, but never see clearly.

The state of slavery is in its own nature bad.

Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?

To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.

When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.

We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school-masters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.

I had no education in filmmaking. I started with a 8mm camera. I made 34 films, and little by little I gained more experience in filming.

The dread was built into the 2016 election – a little spoonful of dread.

I can’t believe that I changed so little. I expected to look old and hollow and gray, but I guess it’s only me on the inside that has shriveled and deteriorated.

Voice comes to you through a spell, a trance. The best voices are not you… they’re a little away from you.

Im free – but Im also not free because there are millions of young people living in Iran. A filmmaker can only do a little.

The difference between ordinary and extra-ordinary is so often just simply that little word – extra.

Why think of liberation at some future time? Liberation is in the little things, here and now.

I honestly don’t even know how I got into acting. It happened so quickly because my mom and sister used to do commercials, and apparently when I was little I would unbuckle myself from the stroller and crash their auditions.