Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.

He, who knows how to distinguish between true and false, must have an adequate idea of true and false.

. . . to know the order of nature, and regard the universe as orderly is the highest function of the mind.

Nature has no goal in view, and final causes are only human imaginings.

The more a government strives to curtail freedom of speech, the more obstinately is it resisted; not indeed by the avaricious, ... but by those whom good education, sound morality, and virtue have rendered more free.

No one doubts but that we imagine time from the very fact that we imagine other bodies to be moved slower or faster or equally fast. We are accustomed to determine duration by the aid of some measure of motion.

I make this chief distinction between religion and superstition, that the latter is founded on ignorance, the former on knowledge.