It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
There's too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will.
As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
That in man which cannot be domesticated is not his evil but his goodness.
He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright.
Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.
Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.