What makes men happy is liking what they have to do. This is a principle on which society is not founded

- Claude Adrien Helvetius

To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a pro…

- Claude Adrien Helvetius

Pleasure and pain are the only springs of action in man, and always will be.

- Claude Adrien Helvetius

Truth is a torch which gleams in the fog but does not dispel it.

- Claude Adrien Helvetius

By annihilating desires, you annihilate the mind.

- Claude Adrien Helvetius

Education made us what we are.

- Claude Adrien Helvetius

There is but one man who can believe himself free from envy; and it is he who has never examined his own heart.

- Claude Adrien Helvetius

Envy honors the dead in order to insult the living.

- Claude Adrien Helvetius

The degree of genius necessary to please us is pretty nearly the same proportion that we ourselves have.

- Claude Adrien Helvetius