“All churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit.”

Our greatest enemies, the ones we must fight most often, are within.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

Every person of learning is finally his own teacher.

Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must undertake to support it.

Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.

When extraordinary power and extraordinary pay are allotted to any individual in a government, he becomes the center, round which every kind of corruption generates and forms.

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

Practical religion consists in doing good: and the only way of serving God is that of endeavoring to make His creation happy. All preaching that has not this for its object is nonsense and hypocrisy.

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.

There are two distinct classes of men – those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes.

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

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.

It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error.

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.

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.

When we’re afraid of losing something, we end up losing it indeed.

When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear, against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect, to find ourselves in the other.

It takes courage to choose hope over fear.

Our fears find us and force us to confront them over and over again.

Fear of judgement increases the risk of insecurity and losing your uniqueness. Don’t let the judgement of others loose your inner peace. 

Don’t let the fear of failure make you dig up what you’ve planted just to see if it’s growing.  

We fear what we don’t understand.

Fears inspire us to unfold our potential.