History  
The world is old, but history is of yesterday.—Mélanges Historiques.
If you would put to profit the present time, one must not spend his life in propagating ancient fables.—Ibid.
A mature man who has serious business does not repeat the tales of his nurse.—Ibid.
Search through all nations and you will not find one whose history does not begin with stories worthy of the Four Sons of Aymon and of Robert the Devil.—Politique et Legislation.
Ancient histories are enigmas proposed by antiquity to posterity, which understands them not—Dict. Phil. (Art. “Histoire”).
A real fact is of more value than a hundred antitheses.—Melanges Historiques.
I have a droll idea. It is that only people who have written tragedies can throw interest into our dry and barbarous history. There is necessary in a history, as in a drama, exposition, knotty plot, and dénouement, with agreeable episode.—Corr. gén. 1740.
They have made but the history of the kings, not that of the nation. It seems that during fourteen hundred years there were only kings, ministers, and generals among the Gauls. But our morals, our laws, our customs, our intelligence—are these then nothing?—Corr., 1740.
Is fraud sanctified by being antiquated?—Sottisier.
I have ever esteemed it charlatanry to paint, other than by facts, public men with whom we have had no connection.—Corr. gen., 1752.
If one surveys the history of the world, one finds weaknesses punished, but great crimes fortunate, and the world is a vast scene of brigandages abandoned to fortune.—Essai sur les M?urs, c. 191.
Since the ancient Romans, I have known no nation enriched by victories.—Contant d' Orville, i. 337.
To buy peace from an enemy is to furnish him with the sinews of war.—Ibid, p. 334.
The grand art of surprising, killing, and robbing is a heroism of the highest antiquity.—Dial. 24.
Murderers are punished, unless they kill in grand company to the sound of trumpets; that is the rule.—Dict. Phil. (Art. “Droit”).
We formerly made war in order to eat; but in the long run, all the admirable institutions degenerate.—Dial. 24.
It suffices often that a mad Minister of State shall have bitten another Minister for the rabies to be communicated in a few months to five hundred thousand men.—Ibid.
In this world there (are) only offensive wars; defensive ones are only resistance to armed robbers.—Ibid.
Twenty volumes in folio never yet made a revolution. It is the portable little shilling books that are to be feared. If the Gospel cost twelve hundred sesterces, the Christian religion would never have been established.—Correspondence with D1 Alembert, 1765.
Wars
 
C.: What, you do not admit there are just wars?
A.: I have never known any of the kind; to me it appears contradictory and impossible.
C.: What! when the Pope Alexander VI. and his infamous son Borgia pillaged the Roman States, strangled and poisoned the lords of the land, while according them indulgences: was it not permissible to arm against these monsters?
A.: Do you not see that it was these monsters who made war? Those who defended themselves from aggression but sustained it. There are constantly only offensive wars in this world; the defensive is nothing but resistance to armed robbers.
C.: You mock us. Two princes dispute an heritage, their right is litigious, their reasons equally plausible; it is necessary then that war should decide, and this war is just on both sides.
A.: It is you who mock. It is physically impossible that both are right, and it is absurd and barbarous that the people should perish because one of these two princes has reasoned badly. Let them fight together in a closed field if they wish, but that an entire people should be sacrificed to their interests, there is the horror.—l' A.B.C.
Politics
 
They have discovered in their fine politics the art of causing those to die of hunger who, by cultivating the earth, give the means of life to others.—Sottisier.
Society has been too long like a game of cards, where the rogues cheat the dupes, while sensible people dare not warn the losers that they are deceived.—Questions sur les Miracles.
They have only inculcated belief in absurdities to men in order to subdue them.—Ibid.
The most tolerable of all governments is doubtless the republican, since that approaches the nearest towards natural equality.—Idées Républicaines.
A Republican is ever more attached to his country than a subject to his, for the same reason that one loves better his own possessions than those of a master.—Pensées sur le Gouvernement.
Give too much power to anybody and be sure they will abuse it. Were the monks of La Trappe spread throughout the world, let them confess princesses, educate youth, preach and write, and in about ten years they would be similar to the Jesuits, and it would be necessary to repress them.—Mél. Balance Egale.
What are politics beyond the art of lying a propos?—Contant D'Orville.
“Reasons of State” is a phrase invented to serve as excuse for tyrants.—Commentaire sur le traité des Délits.
The best government is that where there are the fewest useless men.—Dial. 4.
Man is born free. The best government is that which most preserves to each mortal this gift of nature.—Histoire de Russie.
To be free, to have only equals, is the true life, the natural life of man; all other is an unworthy artifice, a poor comedy, where one plays the r?le of master, the other of slave, this one a parasite, and that other a pander.—Dial. 24.
Why is liberty so rare? Because it is the best possession.—Dict. Phil. (“Venise”).
Those who say that all men are equal, say truth if they mean that men have an equal right to liberty, to the property of their own goods, and the protection of the laws. They are much deceived if they think that men should be equal in their employments, since they are not so by their faculties.—Essai sur les M?urs, i.
Despotism is the punishment of the bad conduct of men. If a community is mastered by one man or by several, it is plainly because it has not the courage and ability necessary for self-government.—Idées Republic-aines, 1765.
I do not give myself up to my fellow-citizens without reserve. I do not give them the power to kill or to rob me by plurality of votes. I submit to help them, and to be aided, to do justice, and to receive it. No other agreement.—Notes on Rousseau's “Social Contract”
The Population Question
 
The Man of Forty Crowns: I have heard much talk of population. Were we to take it into our heads to beget double the number of children we now do; were our country doubly peopled, so that we had forty millions of inhabitants instead of twenty, what would happen?
The Geometrician: Each would have, instead of forty, but twenty crowns to live upon; or the land would have to produce the double of what it now does; or there would be the double of the nation’s industry, or of gain from foreign countries; or one half of the nation sent to America; or the one half of the nation should eat the other.—The Man of Forty Crowns.
Nature’s Way
 
Nature cares very little for individuals. There are other insects which do not live above one day, but of which the species is perpetual. Nature resembles those great princes who reckon as nothing the loss of four hundred thousand men, so they but accomplish their august designs.— The Man of Forty Crowns.
Prayer
 
When the man of forty crowns saw himself the father of a son, he began to think himself a man of some weight in the state; he hoped to furnish, at least, ten subjects to the king, who should all prove useful. He made the best baskets in the world, and his wife was an excellent sempstress. She was born in the neighborhood of a rich abbey of a hundred thousand livres a year. Her husband asked me, one day, why those gentlemen, who were so few in number, had swallowed so many of the forty crown lots? “Are they more useful to their country than I am?”—“No, dear neighbor.”—“Do they, like me, contribute at least to the population of it?”—“No, not to appearance, at least.”—“Do they cultivate the land? Do they defend the state when it is attacked?”—“No, they pray to God for us.”—“Well, then, I will pray to God for them, and let us go snacks.”—The Man of Forty Crowns.
Doubt and Speculation
 
The Man of Forty Crowns: I have sometimes a great mind to laugh at all I have been told.
The Geometrician: And a very good mind it is. I advise you to doubt of everything, except that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones, and that triangles which have the same bases and height are equal to one another; or like propositions, as, for example, that two and two make four.
The Man of Forty Crowns: Yes; I hold it very wise to doubt; but I am curious since I have made my fortune and have leisure. I could wish, when my will moves my arm or my leg, to discover the spring, for surely there is one, by which my will moves them. I wonder sometimes why I can lift or lower my eyes, yet cannot move my ears. I think—and I wish I could know a little how—I mean,—there, to have my thought palpable to me, to touch it, as it were. That would surely be very curious. I want to find out whether I think from myself, or whether it is God that gives me my ideas; whether my soul came into my body at six weeks, or at one day old; how it lodged itself in my brain; whether I think much when in a profound sleep, or in a lethargy. I torture my brains to know how one body impels another. My sensations are no less a wonder to me; I find something divine in them, and especially in pleasure. I have striven sometimes to imagine a new sense, but could never arrive at it. Geometricians know all these things; kindly be so good as to teach me.
The Geo............