“Character is much easier kept than recovered.”

The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.

When all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect.

Christianity is the strangest religion ever set up, for it committed a murder upon Jesus in order to redeem mankind from the sin of eating an apple.

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.

To swear is neither brave, polite, nor wise.

The present state of atomic theory is characterized by the fact that we not only believe the existence of atoms to be proved beyond a doubt, but also we even believe that we have an intimate knowledge of the constituents of the individual atoms.

The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves.

The only thing on the mind of a shark is to eat.

Charm strikes the sight, but merit wins the soul.

It often happens that those are the best people whose characters have been most injured by slanderers: as we usually find that to be the sweetest fruit which the birds have been picking at.

Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.

Legendary? I don’t know. I’m just Serena.