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.