It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf.
Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.
The birthday of a new world is at hand.
The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax.
My mind is my own church.
The right of voting for representatives, is the primary right by which other rights are protected.
The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.
These are the times that try men’s souls.
There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found inany other system of religion. All other systems have something in them that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them.
Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.
Man must go back to nature for information.
The Vatican is a dagger in the heart of Italy.
Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.
Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.
The idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureate.
A Constitution is not the act of a Government, but of a people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is a power without right.
Each government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective nations, and incensing them to hostilities. Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of government.