Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.
Power must never be trusted without a check.
The happiness of society is the end of government.
All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.
The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people’s hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.
Disease, a simple famine, plagues of locusts everywhere, or a cataclysmic earthquake, I’d accept with some despair, but no, you sent us Congress! Good God, Sir, was that fair?
That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the world.
The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.
Government has no right to hurt the hair of an Atheist for his Opinions. Let him have a care of his Practices.
There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution.
The only thing most people do better than anyone else is read their own handwriting.
To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.
To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.
You will ever remember that all the end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen.
There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.
Several country towns, within my observation, have at least a dozen taverns. Here the time, the money, the health and the modesty, of most that are young and of many old, are wasted. Here diseases, vicious habits, bastards and legislators are frequently spawned.
Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be.
Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.
Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.
This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.