“What is it the Bible teaches us? – raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? – to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.”

The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind.

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.

Do you not take him to be just who commits no manner of injustice?

Now is the time to show your responsibility and commitment to all life, including your own.

I commit to a lifetime of unlearning the poison of white supremacy that is still alive and continues to cause suffering.

Though the heart loves it is the mind that commits such passions to memory.

If we fall, we don’t need self-recrimination or blame or anger – we need a reawakening of our intention and a willingness to re-commit, to be whole-hearted once again.

The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.

Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.

Evil, as she saw it, need not be committed only by demonic monsters but—with disastrous effect—by morons and imbeciles as well, especially if, as we see in our own day, their deeds are sanctioned by religious authority.