“In Deism our reason and our belief become happily united. The wonderful structure of the universe, and everything we behold in the system of the creation, prove to us, far better than books can do, the existence of a God, and at the same time proclaim His attributes.”

Virtue is not hereditary.

The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes.

Some people can be reasoned into sense, and others must be shocked into it.

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.

It is easy to see that when republican virtue fails, slavery ensues.

Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.

The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.

Character is much easier kept than recovered.

Taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.

Government without a constitution, is a power without a right.

If those to whom power is delegated do well, they will be respected; if not, they will be despised.

If I do not believe as you believe, it proves that you do not believe as I believe, and that is all that it proves.

We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

The right of voting for representatives , is the primary right by which other rights are protected.

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

There is great difference between trust and belief. Trust is personal, Belief is social.

My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world. They represent a narrowing-down from reality, an impoverishment of what the real world has to offer.

The highest power is the human mind. That’s where God came from and my belief in God is my belief in myself.

I rejoice in a belief that intellectual light will spring up in the dark corners of the earth.

If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.

Belief clings, but faith lets go.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.