Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.

If we love something similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring it about that it should love us in return.

He who wishes to revenge injuries by reciprocal hatred will live in misery. But he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love, fights with pleasure and confidence; he resists equally one or many men, and scarcely needs at all the help of fortune. Those whom he conquers yield joyfully

After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.

I have resolved to demonstrate by a certain and undoubted course of argument, or to deduce from the very condition of human nature, not what is new and unheard of, but only such things as agree best with practice.

the ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or restrain by fear, nor to exact obedience, but to free every man from fear that he may live in all possible security... In fact the true aim of government is liberty.

To comprehend an idea, a person must simultaneously accept it as true. Conscious analysis - which, depending on the idea, may occur almost immediately or with considerable effort - allows the mind to reject what it intially accepted as fact.