The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.
Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.
Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for wise and able men to improve into useful matter.
I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered; and the easier repaired when disordered...
That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true...
The declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice.
One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise, she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in the crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to “bind me in all cases whatsoever” to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?
Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured.
A little matter will move a party, but it must be something great that moves a nation.
We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power.
Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it.
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.
Every religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that instructs him to be bad.
The story of the redemption will not stand examination. That man should redeem himself from the sin of eating an apple by committing a murder on Jesus Christ, is the strangest system of religion ever set up.
To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.
It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.