“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.”

Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.

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.

Why am I an atheist? The short answer is that I cannot accept any of the alternatives. I simply don’t find them believable.

It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around…. It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord.

All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance and ferocity.

Nature, you say, is totally inexplicable without a God. That is to say, to explain what you understand very little, you have need of a cause which you understand not at all.

The Republican Party: a few million gun-toting, Armageddon-ready Baptists.

Frankly, I adore your catchy slogan, “Adoption, not Abortion,” although no one has been able to figure out, even with expert counseling, how to use adoption as a method of birth control, or at what time of the month it is most effective.

Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this.

I was desperately unhappy trying to adjust to the world.