Freedom

The thing is, you have to let go of regret to move forward.

The only thing of which one can be guilty is of having given ground relative to one's desire.

There is no ideology except by the subject and for subjects.

The law is the business of officials and institutions, and not of anyone else, certainly not of moral theory.

Acceptance of the law sometimes entails self-subordination: the acceptance and observance of a constraint that prevents the law-acceptance from being too constrained.

There is no basis for deciding in favor of one or the other element in the dialectics of freedom and community. There is no neutral ground. All we have is conversation.

Technology should serve humanity, not enslave it.

When reason sets itself free in its autonomy, it constitutes itself as an ultimate value.

The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.

Rigid exclusiveness has always been criticized by liberals, and rightly so. But nowadays many people, sincerely attached to liberal values, are using these very values to suppress anything that goes against their beliefs, or rather, anything that they believe is against their beliefs.

The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes.

The aim of philosophy is to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.

The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.

To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.

The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.