“The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.”
“Every abuse ought to be reformed, unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself.”
“Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.”
“Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy; the mad daughter of a wise mother.”
“They use thought only to justify their injustices, and speech only to disguise their thoughts.”
“The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.”
“Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.”
“In my life, I have prayed but one prayer: oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.”
“My prayer to God is a very short one: ''O Lord, make my enemies look ridiculous!'' God has granted it.”
“The pursuit of what is true and the practice of what is good are the two most important objects of philosophy.”
“Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason.”
“Liberty, then, about which so many volumes have been written is, when accurately defined, only the power of acting.”
“We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies it is the first law of nature.”
“The discover of what is true, and the practice of that which is good, are the two most important objects of philosophy.”
“I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are paying your annuities. It is the only pleasure I have left.”
“When he to whom a person speaks does not understand, and he who speaks does not understand himself, that is metaphysics.”
“Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.”
“Every man is the creature of the age in which he lives; very few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.”
“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.”
“Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.”
“When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy.”
“Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing.”
“It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.”
“Animals have these advantages over man: They have no theologians to instruct them, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.”
“It is not known precisely where angels dwell -- whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.”
“Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.”
“If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two, they would cut each other's throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness.”
“Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create.”
“I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men that the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship towers considerably above him who imagined innate ideas.”