... the yearly expenses of the existing religious systemexceed in these United States twenty millions of dollars. Twenty millions! For teaching what? Things unseen and causes unknown!... Twenty millions would more than suffice to make us wise; and alas! do they not more than suffice to make us foolish?

... the yearly expenses of the existing religious systemexceed in these United States twenty millions of dollars. Twenty millions! For teaching what? Things unseen and causes unknown!... Twenty millions would more than suffice to make us wise; and alas! do they not more than suffice to make us foolish?

An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue.

The simplest principles become difficult of practice, when habits, formed in error, have been fixed by time, and the simplest truths hard to receive when prejudice has warped the mind.

The sciences have ever been the surest guides to virtue.

There is but one honest limit to the rights of a sentient being; it is where they touch the rights of another sentient being.

It was in this year, 1828, that the standard of "the Christian Party in Politics" was openly unfurled... This was an evident attempt, through the influence of the clergy over the female mind - until this hour lamentably neglected in the United States - to effect a union of Church and State.