Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?
If you run after wit, you will succeed in catching folly.
Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.
When a government is arrived to that degree of corruption as to be incapable of reforming itself, it would not lose much by being new moulded.
The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power. The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel is incompatible with the despotic rage.
What cowardice it is to be dismayed by the happiness of others and devastated by there good fortune.
The false notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe we are important enough for the Supreme Being to upset nature on our behalf.
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
Brutes are deprived of the high advantages which we have; but they have some which we have not. They have not our hopes, but theyare without our fears; they are subject like us to death, but without knowing it; even most of them are more attentive than we to self-preservation, and do not make so bad a use of their passions.
There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.
Europe is a state with several provinces
This punishment of death is the remedy, as it were, of a sick society.
Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.
In the infancy of societies, the chiefs of state shape its institutions; later the institutions shape the chiefs of state.
Ever since the invention of gunpowder.. I continually tremble lest men should, in the end, uncover some secret which would provide a short way of abolishing mankind, of annihilating peoples and nations in their entirety.
Honor is unknown in despotic states.
When one wants to change manners and customs, one should not do so by changing the laws.
I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.
Power ought to serve as a check to power.
Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words.
People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.
I shall be obliged to wander to the right and to the left, that I may investigate and discover the truth.
[The Pope] will make the king believe that three are only one, that the bread he eats is not bread... and a thousand other things of the same kind.
As men are affected in all ages by the same passions, the occasions which bring about great changes are different, but the causes are always the same.
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