I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace.
The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.
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.
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.
The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
These are the times that try men’s souls.
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason.
That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.
An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
Character is much easier kept than recovered.
We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.
Time makes more converts than reason.
Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.
To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.
Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.