“A State can be no better than the citizens of which it is composed. Our labour now is not to mould States but make citizens.”

“In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.”

“It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.”

“So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbors. The citizen of the universe would be the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer.”

“Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.”

“The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.”

“Our character is composed of our ideas and our feelings: and, since it has been proved that we give ourselves neither feelings nor ideas, our character does not depend on us. If it did depend on us, there is nobody who would not be perfect. If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; but when one does reflect, one realizes that one is master of nothing”