The warmth of zeal is not perhaps the most dangerous rock that we have to avoid; but rather that languour which ease produces and a distrust of our own courage.

Pity is treason.

Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular.

Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all.

A nation is truly corrupt, when, after having, by degrees lost its character and liberty, it slides from democracy into aristocracy or monarchy; this is the death of the political body by decrepitude.

The king must die so that the country can live.

In the system of the French revolution that which is immoral is impolitic, and what tends to corrupt is counter-revolutionary. Weaknesses, vices, prejudices are the road to monarchy.

Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime.

Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil.