To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.
The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.
But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.
I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist of doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies; yet our present numbers are sufficient to repel the force of all the world.
Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
Who can say by what exceeding fine action of fine matter it is that a thought is produced in what we call the mind? And yet that thought when produced, as i know produce the thought that i am writing, is capable of becoming inmortal, and is the only production of man that has that capacity.
It is not because the right principles have been violated, that they are to be abandoned.
Society in every state is a blessing, but a government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.
Every child born in the world must be considered as deriving its existence from God. The world is this new to him as it was to the first that existed, and his natural right in it is of the same kind.
I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie; and the priests, if they can, may replant them. They may, perhaps, stick them in the ground, but they will never make them grow.
If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.