No government can exist without taxation. The money must necessarily be levied on the people; and the grand art consists of levying so as not to oppress.
I think it better to keep a profound silence with regard to the Christian fables, which are canonized by their antiquity and the credulity of absurd and insipid people.
Artillery adds dignity, to what would otherwise be an ugly brawl.
God is always with the strongest battalions.
A German singer! I should as soon expect to get pleasure from the neighing of my horse.
Do not neglect the principles of foresight and know that often, puffed up with success, armies have lost the fruit of their heroism through a feeling of false security.
I have no fault to find with those who teach geometry. That science is the only one which has not produced sects; it is founded on analysis and on synthesis and on the calculus; it does not occupy itself with the probable truth; moreover it has the same method in every country.
One should never despair too soon.
If I wished to punish a province, I would have it governed by philosophers.
Though I may not be a king in my future life, so much the better: I shall nevertheless live an active life and, on top of it, earn less ingratitude.
It has been said by a certain general, that the first object in the establishment of an army ought to be making provision for the belly, that being the basis and foundation of all operations.
He who cannot stand misfortune does not deserve good fortune.
In my state every man can be saved after his own fashion.
The floods which devastate regions, the fire of the lightning which reduces cities to ashes, the poison of the plague which afflicts provinces, are not as disastrous in the world as the dangerous morals and unrestrained passions of the kings:.
But France’s powerful armies, and a very large number of fortresses, ensure that the French Sovereign will possess the throne forever, and they do not have anything to fear now concerning internal wars or their neighbors invading France.
It is enough”, this malicious man tells us, “to extinguish the line of the defeated prince.” Can one read this without quivering in horror and indignation?
Just as people are born, live a time, and die by diseases or old age, in the same way republics are formed, flower a few centuries, and perish finally by the audacity of a citizen, or by the weapons of their enemies. All has their period; all empires, and largest monarchies even, have only so much time: the republics feel continually that this time will arrive, and they look at any too-powerful family as the carriers of a disease which will give them the blow of death.
The Prussian army always attacks.
Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.
A private individual who has the misfortune to have been born with this lust for power, is more miserable than mad. He is dulled to the present, and exists only in future or imaginary times; nothing in the world can satisfy him, and the drunken ambition which has mastered him always adulterates the softness of his pleasures with bitterness.
An Englishman had the insanity to kill himself a few years ago in London; on his table was found a note where he justified his action, which said that this way, he would never become sick again.