Wisdom is not the purchase of a day.
The state of a king shuts him from the world, yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly...
An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws.
Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence.
From such beginnings of governments, what could be expected, but a continual system of war and extortion?
We feel something like respect for consistency even in error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice; but the vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable.
To reason with goverments, as they have existed for ages, is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves that reforms can be expected.
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of humans; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.
Nothing, they say, is more certain than death, and nothing is more uncertain than the time of dying.
It is important that we should never lose sight of this distinction. We must not confuse the peoples with their governments...
Liberty cannot be purchased by a wish.
I disbelieve all holy men and holy books.
The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the Church admits to be more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in the book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to the original system of theology.
What more does man want to know than that the hand or power that made these things is divine, is omnipotent? Let him believe this with the force it is impossible to repel, if he permits his reason to act, and his rule of moral life will follow of course.
It was needless, after this, to say that all was vanity and vexation of spirit; for it is impossible to derive happiness from the company of those whom we deprive of happiness.
It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance.
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.
Human nature is not of itself vicious.
Virtues are acquired through endeavor, Which rests wholly upon yourself. So, to praise others for their virtues Can but encourage one’s own efforts.
It is the direction and not the magnitude which is to be taken into consideration.