“The alms given to a naked man in the street do not fulfil the obligations of the state, which owes to every citizen a certain subsistence, a proper nourishment, convenient clothing, and a kind of life not incompatible with health.”

In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law.

If you run after wit, you will succeed in catching folly.

I acknowledge that history is full of religious wars: but we must distinguish; it is not the multiplicity of religions which has produced these wars; it was the intolerating spirit which animated that one which thought she had the power of governing.

Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.

This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.

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.

[The Pope] will make the king believe that three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread… and a thousand other things of the same kind.

If triangles had a god, he would have three sides.

Democracy has two excesses to avoid: the spirit of inequality, which leads to an aristocracy, or to the government of a single individual; and the spirit of extreme equality, which conducts it to despotism, as the despotism of a single individual finishes by conquest.

Fain would I glide down a gentle river, but I am carried away by a torrent.

The state is the association of men, and not men themselves; the citizen may perish, and the man remain.

The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice.

Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.

…when the laws have ceased to be executed, as this can only come from the corruption of the republic, the state is already lost.

A price on carbon sufficient to keep 80% of current reserves underground, rebated directly to citizens.

Congress is responsible for everything and unable to do anything, hated by the public creditors, insulted by the soldiers and unsupported by the citizens.

I certainly know German colleagues in the US who try to be Americans, try to melt into Americanism, even before they get married and become American citizens. But I’ve never tried that.

Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured… But not everyone must prove they are a citizen.

We’ll attack anyone who tries to harm our citizens.

Although I was born to famous parents, I know and feel the problems of ordinary citizens.

And now, any of those who refuse, or are unable, to prove they are citizens will receive free insurance paid for by those who are forced to buy insurance because they are citizens.

I hate tooting my own horn, but after Steven Spielberg saw Yentl, he said: “I wish I could tell you how to fix your picture, but I can’t. It’s the best film I’ve seen since Citizen Kane”.