Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle.

Africans had to be taught that nudity is wicked; this was done very cheaply by missionaries.

I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds.

Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love.

Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that is happiness.

[Regarding] the convention that clergymen are more virtuous than other men. Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average.

Citizens as conceived by governments are persons who admire the status quo and are prepared to exert themselves for its preservation. Oddly enough, while all governments aim at producing men of this type to the exclusion of all other types, their heroes in the past are of exactly the sort that they aim at preventing in the present. Americans admire George Washington and Jefferson, but imprison those who share their political opinions.