It is... a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.

Nothing is more favorable to the rise of politeness and learning, than a number of neighboring and independent states, connected together by commerce and policy.

Superstition is an enemy to civil liberty.

It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have preference above the accurate.

A man who has cured himself of all ridiculous prepossessions, and is fully, sincerely, and steadily convinced, from experience as well as philosophy, that the difference of fortune makes less difference in happiness than is vulgarly imagined; such a one does not measure out degrees of esteem according to the rent-rolls of his acquaintance. ... his internal sentiments are more regulated by the personal characters of men, than by the accidental and capricious favors of fortune.

[priests are] the pretenders to power and dominion, and to a superior sanctity of character, distinct from virtue and good morals.

It were better, never to look beyond the present material world. By supposing it to contain the principle of its order within itself, we really assert it to be God; and the sooner we arrive at that divinity, the better.