“I say to myself: "Who are you to measure infinite power?”

“In order not to find me in contradiction with myself, I should be allowed enough time to explain myself”

“People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.”

“There is, I am sensible, an age at which every individual of you would choose to stop; and you will look out for the age at which, had you your wish, your species had stopped. Uneasy at your present condition for reasons which threaten your unhappy posterity with still greater uneasiness, you will perhaps wish it were in your power to go back; and this sentiment ought to be considered, as the panegyric of your first parents, the condemnation of you contemporaries, and a source of terror to all those who may have the misfortune of succeeding you.”

“There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.”

“Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like.”

“The word ‘slavery’ and ‘right’ are contradictory, they cancel each other out. Whether as between one man and another, or between one man and a whole people, it would always be absurd to say: "I hereby make a covenant with you which is wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I will respect it so long as I please and you shall respect it as long as I wish.”