“Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this.”

Though oppression may give rise to violent and repeated outbreaks, like the convulsions of a man in pain, it cannot mature a settled purpose and plan of regeneration, unless a new notion of happiness is joined to the sense of present evil.

The long term versus the short term argument is one used by losers.

There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong.

Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.

There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men.

The will of the people cannot make just that which is unjust.

The true guide of our conduct is no outward authority, but the voice of God, who comes down to dwell in our souls, who knows all our thoughts, to whom are owing all the truth we know, and all the good we do; for vice is voluntary, and virtue comes from the grace of the heavenly spirit within.

When the last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached, and Bellarmine lectured; but Machiavelli reigned.

Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power — power sufficient to interfere with property.

Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.

History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.

Far from being the product of a democratic revolution and of an opposition to English institutions, the constitution of the United States was the result of a powerful reaction against democracy, and in favor of the traditions of the mother country.

The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.

The one function that most gods seem to have in common is to give human existence some ultimate purpose – and, while it is not possible to disprove an ultimate purpose, there does not seem to be any evidence for it.

Why am I an atheist? The short answer is that I cannot accept any of the alternatives. I simply don’t find them believable.

It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around…. It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord.

All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance and ferocity.

Nature, you say, is totally inexplicable without a God. That is to say, to explain what you understand very little, you have need of a cause which you understand not at all.

The Republican Party: a few million gun-toting, Armageddon-ready Baptists.

Frankly, I adore your catchy slogan, “Adoption, not Abortion,” although no one has been able to figure out, even with expert counseling, how to use adoption as a method of birth control, or at what time of the month it is most effective.

I was desperately unhappy trying to adjust to the world.