Quote collection
388 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The animals you eat are not those who devour others; you do not eat the carnivorous beasts, you take them as your pattern. You only hunger for the sweet and gentle creatures which harm no one, which follow you, serve you, and are devoured by you as the reward of their service."
"In all the ills that befall us, we are more concerned by the intention than the result. A tile that falls off a roof may injure us more seriously, but it will not wound us so deeply as a stone thrown deliberately by a malevolent hand. The blow may miss, but the intention always strikes home."
"The falsification of history has done more to impede human development than any one thing known to mankind."
"The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless."
"Nature wants children to be children before men... Childhood has its own seeing, thinking and feeling."
"That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and does what he desires."
"The greatest braggarts are usually the biggest cowards."
"War is then not a relationship between one man and another, but a relationship between one State and another, in which individuals are enemies only by accident, not as men, nor even as citizens, but as soldiers; not as members of the fatherland, but as its defenders. Finally, any State can only have other States, and not men, as enemies, inasmuch as it is impossible to fix a true relation between things of different natures."
"Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals."
"It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living."
"To discover the rules of society that are best suited to nations, there would need to exist a superior intelligence, who could understand the passions of men without feeling any of them, who had no affinity with our nature but knew it to the full, whose happiness was independent of ours, but who would nevertheless make our happiness his concern, who would be content to wait in the fullness of time for a distant glory, and to labour in one age to enjoy the fruits in another. Gods would be needed to give men laws."
"Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken."
"Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves."
"Trust your heart rather than your head."
"My liveliest delight was in having conquered myself."
"Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion."
"...in respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself."
"It is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry majority goes in need of necessities."
"In a well governed state, there are few punishments, not because there are many pardons, but because criminals are rare; it is when a state is in decay that the multitude of crimes is a gaurantee of impunity."
"Love childhood, indulge its sports, its pleasures, its delightful instincts. Who has not sometimes regretted that age when laughter was ever on the lips, and when the heart was ever at peace?"