It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.
Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.
Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.
When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.
It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.
We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education.
Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.
Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.
Base souls have no faith in great individuals.
The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.
Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.
Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.
You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.
The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.
God made me and broke the mold.