“When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.”

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.

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.

Mostly, nothing’s really changed. I’m still the dorky nerd that I always was.

In fact, the world needs more nerds.

I am very proud of my nerd-dom.

I was a huge nerd in high school. Sure, I socialized – but I was definitely a nerd.

I’m a closet nerd. I love to study history and visit museums.

The soft nerds are the ones who get violently ill whenever anybody mentions an integral sign.

In our society we have hard nerds and soft nerds.

I think that nerds, if you want to call them that, have only gotten more hip and assimilated into the culture.