I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
Time makes more converts than reason.
Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
The Vatican is a dagger in the heart of Italy.
He that rebels against reason is a real rebel, but he that in defence of reason rebels against tyranny has a better title to Defender of the Faith, than George the Third.
The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.
Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.
Human nature is not of itself vicious.
One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.
To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.
A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
