[Africans are] always vicious... mostly inclined to lasciviousness, vengeance, theft and lies.

Distance is a great promoter of admiration!

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.

How old the world is! I walk between two eternities... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that valley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don't want to die!

The wisest among us is very lucky never to have met the woman, be she beautiful or ugly, intelligent or stupid, who could drive him crazy enough to be fit to be put into an asylum.

If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.

When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz, one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.

Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.

There's a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.

There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.

Impenetrable in their dissimulation, cruel in their vengeance, tenacious in their purposes, unscrupulous as to their methods, animated by profound and hidden hatred for the tyranny of man - it is as though there exists among them an ever-present conspiracy toward domination, a sort of alliance like that subsisting among the priests of every country.

The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.

It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.

Man was born to live with his fellow human beings. Separate him, isolate him, his character will go bad, a thousand ridiculous affects will invade his heart, extravagant thoughts will germinate in his brain, like thorns in an uncultivated land.

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

I am beginning to feel that I am growing old; soon, I shall have to eat mush like children. I shall no longer be able to speak, which will be a rather great advantage for others and but a small inconvenience for myself.... The time in which I count in years is gone; that in which I count in days is here.... I had thought that the fibers of the heart would grow callous with age, it's not at all the case. I am not sure that my sensitivity hasn't increased; everything moves me, affects me.... To fade out between a man feeling your pulse and another bothering your head; not to know where one comes from, why one came, where one is going ...

Scepticism is the first step towards truth. Variant: A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence skepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone.

To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.

To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him.

We do not know nature; causes hidden in her breast might have produced everything. In your turn, observe the polyp of Trembley: does it not contain in itself the causes which bring about regeneration? Why then would it be absurd to think that there are physical causes by reason of which everything has been made, and to which the whole chain of this vast universe is so necessarily bound and held that, nothing which happens, could have failed to happen,-causes, of which we are so invincibly ignorant that we have had recourse to a God, who, as some aver, is not so much as a logical entity? Thus to destroy chance is not to prove the existence of a supreme being, since there may be some other thing which is neither chance nor God-I mean, nature. It follows that the study of nature can make only unbelievers; and the way of thinking of all its more successful investigators proves this.

This is a work that cannot be completed except by a society of men of letters and skilled workmen, each working separately on his own part, but all bound together solely by their zeal for the best interests of the human race and a feeling of mutual good will.

No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.

Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.

The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual.

Go further, and require each of them to make a contribution: you will see how many things are still missing, and you will be obliged to get the assistance of a large number of men who belong to different classes, priceless men, but to whom the gates of the academies are nonetheless closed because of their social station. All the members of these learned societies are more than is needed for a single object of human science; all the societies together are not sufficient for a science of man in general.

Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man's afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures ... But what provokes me is that only their adverse side is considered ... and yet only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.

I believe in God, although I live very happily with atheists... It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God.

There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.

Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others.

[Jews are] angry and brutish people, vile and vulgar men, slaves worthy of the yoke [Talmudism] which you bear... Go, take back your books and remove yourselves from me. [ The Talmud ] taught the Jews to steal the goods of Christians, to regard them as savage beasts, to push them over the precipice... to kill them with impunity and to utter every morning the most horrible imprecations against them.

When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.

To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!

The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children.

On doit exiger de moi que je cherche la vérité, mais non que je la trouve. One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it.

There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.

The purpose of an encyclopedia is to collect knowledge disseminated around the globe; to set forth its general system to the men with whom we live, and transmit it to those who will come after us, so that the work of preceding centuries will not become useless to the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, becoming better instructed, will at the same time become more virtuous and happy, and that we should not die without having rendered a service to the human race in the future years to come.