The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.

What praise is implied in the simple epithet useful! What reproach in the contrary.

In this sullen apathy neither true wisdom nor true happiness can be found.

Nothing can be more real, or concern us more, than our own sentiments of pleasure and uneasiness; and if these be favourable to virtue and unfavourable to vice, no more can be requisite to the regulation of our conduct and behavior.

I never asserted such an absurd thing as that things arise without a cause.

But, historians, and even common sense, may inform us, that, however specious these ideas of perfect equality may seem, they are really, at bottom, impracticable; and were they not so, would be extremely pernicious to human society. Render possessions ever so equal, men's different degrees of art, care, and industry will immediately break that equality. Or if you check these virtues, you reduce society to the most extreme indigence; and instead of preventing want and beggary in a few, render it unavoidable to the whole community.

Everything in the world is purchased by labor.