We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.

Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.

The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counter authority to the law.

Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.

The best mannered people make the most absurd lovers.

Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.

The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.