“The Civilized… murder their children by producing too many of them without being able to provide for their well-being. Morality or theories of false virtue stimulate them to manufacture cannon fodder, anthills of conscripts who are forced to sell themselves out of poverty. This improvident paternity is a false virtue, the selfishness of pleasure.”

“Despots prefer the friendship of the dog, who, unjustly mistreated and debased, still loves and serves the man who wronged him.”

“The method of doubt must be applied to civilization; we must doubt its necessity, its excellence, and its permanence.”

“The philosophers say that the passions are too lively, too fiery; in truth they are weak and languid. All around one sees the mass of men endure the persecution of a few masters and the despotism of prejudices without offering the slightest resistance… their passions are too weak to permit them to derive audacity from despair.”

“Philosophy was right to vaunt liberty; it is the foremost desire of all creatures. But philosophy forgot that in civilized societies liberty is illusory if the common people lack wealth. When the wage-earning classes are poor, their independence is as fragile as a house without foundations. The free man who lacks wealth immediately sinks back under the yoke of the rich. The newly freed slave takes fright at the need of providing for his own subsistence and hastens to sell himself back into slavery in order to escape this new anxiety that hangs over him like Damocles’ sword. In thoughtlessly giving him liberty without wealth, you merely replace his physical torment with a mental torment. He finds life burdensome in his new state… Thus when you give liberty to the people, it must be bolstered by two supports which are the guarantee of comfort and industrial attraction…”

“Social progress and changes of historical period take place in proportion to the advance of women toward liberty, and social decline occurs as a result of the diminution of the liberty of women.”

“the family is a group that needs to escape from itself…”

“The peoples of civilization see their wretchedness increase in direct proportion to the advance of industry.”

“Love in the Phalanstery is no longer, as it is with us, a recreation which detracts from work; on the contrary it is the soul and the vehicle, the mainspring, of all works and of the whole of universal attraction.”

“It is easy to compress the passions by violence. Philosophy suppresses them with a stroke of the pen. Locks and the sword come to the aid of sweet morality, but nature appeals these judgments; she regains her rights in secret. Passion stifled at one point reappears at another like water held back by a dike; it is driven inward like the fluid of an ulcer closed to soon.”