Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.

Muhammad professed to derive from Heaven, and he has inserted in the Koran, not only a body of religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science. The gospel, on the contrary, only speaks of the general relations of men to God and to each other - beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith. This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, whilst the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods.

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.

Any measure that establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form thereby creates an idle and lazy class, living at the expense of the industrial and working class.

There are at the present time two great nations in the world--the Russians and the Americans. The American relies upon his personal interest to accomplish his ends and gives free scope to the unguided exertions and common sense of the people. The Russian centers all his authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.

This so-called tolerance, which, in my opinion, is nothing but a huge indifference.

Remember that life is neither pain nor pleasure; it is serious business, to be entered upon with courage and in a spirit of self-sacrifice.