“Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.”

Liberty… is there only when there is no abuse of power.

Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!

Power ought to serve as a check to power.

If you would be holy, instruct your children, because all the good acts they perform will be imputed to you.

When we seek after wit, we discover only foolishness.

The power of divorce can be given only to those who feel the inconveniences of marriage, and who are sensible of the moment when it is for their interest to make them cease.

If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier that other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are. you are comparing your lot with an ideal which is of course better and therefore you feel worse

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.

Why should I trade one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away?

The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.

Any ideal system is its own worst enemy, and as soon as you start to implement these visions of grandeur, they just fall apart and turn into a complete tyranny.

Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.

Some have said that it is not the business of private men to meddle with government–a bold and dishonest saying, which is fit to come from no mouth but that of a tyrant or a slave.

Men are cowards before women until they become tyrants.

A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children.