“Law in general is human reason, inasmuch as it governs all the inhabitants of the earth: the political and civil laws of each nation ought to be only the particular cases in which human reason is applied.”

Friendship is an arrangement by which we undertake to exchange small favors for big ones.

Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.

When the [law making] and [law enforcement] powers are united in the same person… there can be no liberty.

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.

It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle’s eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.

If we were to place our power at the service of our imaginations rather than our primate politics we would create a civilization worthy of the name.

Education remains the key to both economic and political empowerment.

There is a close connection between socio-political development.

When love of one’s people becomes an absolute, it turns into racism. When love of equality turns into a supreme thing, it can result in hatred and violence toward anyone who has led a privileged life. It is the settled tendency of human societies to turn good political causes into counterfeit gods.

Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events.

Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.

So I like the work he’s doing, and I support it, and I realise that he’s one of very few political leaders around the world that actually has early-childhood development strategise at the top of his agenda.