 God made me and broke the mold. |
| It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist. |
| I only see clearly what I remember. |
| Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong. |
| No man has any natural authority over his fellow men. |
| Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it. |
| Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices. |
| O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it. |
| I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself. |
| We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man. |
| Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. |
| Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion. |
| Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals. |
| I may be no better, but at least I am different. |
| Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide? |
| What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness? |
| I hate books; they only teach us to talk about what we don't know. |
| Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing. |
| No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another. |
| Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves. |
