A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow real poverty.
Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.
It is more rational to suspect knavery and folly than to discount, at a stroke, everything that past experience has taught me about the way things actually work.
I may venture to affirm the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.
Which is more likely: that the whole natural order is suspended, or that a jewish minx should tell a lie?
When I hear that a man is religious, I conclude he is a rascal!
The first ideas of religion arose, not from contemplation of the works of nature, but from a concern with regard to the events of life.
When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities.
A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.
To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive.
In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies of liberty.
The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.
Any pride or haughtiness, is displeasing to us, merely because it shocks our own pride, and leads us by sympathy into comparison, which causes the disagreeable passion of humility.
Superstition is an enemy to civil liberty.
Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding.
While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain.
Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.
No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.
Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.
An established government has an infinite advantage, by that very circumstance of its being established – the bulk of mankind being governed by authority, not reason, and never attributing authority to anything that has not the recommendation of antiquity.