“The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.”

“All is for the best in the best of possible worlds.”

“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.”

“The best is the enemy of good.”

“You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.”

“If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?”

“God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.”