We are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it.

Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.

Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did and never can carry us beyond our own persons, and it is by the imagination only that we form any conception of what are his sensations...His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourselves, when we have this adopted and made them our own, begin at last to affect us, and we then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels.

The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit a remedy.

All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist.

The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable.

Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.