A yawn may not be polite, but at least it is an honest opinion.
The right of commanding is no longer an advantage transmitted by nature; like an inheritance, it is the fruit of labors, the price of courage.
Independence in the end is the fruit of injustice.
Stand upright, speak thy thoughts, declare The truth thou hast, that all may share; Be bold, proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare.
The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him.
He who cannot shine by thought, seeks to bring himself into notice by a witticism.
The man visited by ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for realities is an enthusiast; the man who supports his madness with murder is a fanatic.
History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below.
Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.
We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation.
It has taken seas of blood to drown the idol of despotism, but the English do not think they bought their laws too dearly.
If it’s too silly to be said, it can always be sung.
If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal, nor the philosophical writings of Cicero.
Needless to say since Christ’s expiation not one single Christian has been known to sin, or die.
A fool is a person who guesses and gets it wrong, a clever man is one who guesses, regardless of time period, and gets it right.
Fanaticism, to which men are so much inclined, has always served not only to render them more brutalized but more wicked.
Men appear to prefer ruining one another’s fortunes, and cutting each other’s throats about a few paltry villages, to extending the grand means of human happiness.
Virtue between men is a commerce of good actions: he who has no part in this commerce must not be reckoned.
I never approved either the errors of his book, or the trivial truths he so vigorously laid down. I have, however, stoutly taken his side when absurd men have condemned him for these same truths.
All the persecutors declare against each other mortal war, while the philosopher, oppressed by them all, contents himself with pitying them.