The well understood equity as well as interest of society demand that we work much more to prevent crimes and offenses than to punish them. - African Spir

If pity was always equally alive and acting in all individuals and in all circumstances, we could do away with morality. Unfortunately, it is not compassion, but rather it's opposite - selfishness - that acts most strongly in us.

The intellectual development of man, far from having gotten men away from war, has rather, on the contrary, brought them to a more perfected refinment in the art of killing.

Man is in pursuit of two goals: he is looking for happinesse and, being by essence empty, he is trying to fill his life; the latter reason plays a more considerable role than we ordinarily think. What we take for vainglory, ambition, love of power and riches, is often, indeed, a need to mask this emptiness.