The table I write on I say exists ... meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it.

Many things, for aught I know, may exist, whereof neither I nor any other man hath or can have any idea or notion whatsoever.

To me it seems that liberty and virtue were made for each other. If any man wish to enslave his country, nothing is a fitter preparative than vice; and nothing leads to vice so surely as irreligion.

All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth - in a word, all those bodies which compose the frame of the world - have not any subsistence without a mind.

A ray of imagination or of wisdom may enlighten the universe, and glow into remotest centuries.

Man is an Animal, formidable both from his Passions and his Reason; his Passions often urging him to great Evils, and his Reason furnishing Means to achieve them. To train this Animal, and make him amenable to Order; to inure him to a Sense of Justice and Virtue, to withhold him from ill Courses by Fear, and encourage him in his Duty by Hopes; in short, to fashion and model him for Society, hath been the Aim of civil and religious Institutions; and, in all Times, the Endeavour of good and wise Men. The aptest Method for attaining this End, hath been always judged a proper Education.

It would much conduce to the public benefit, if, instead of discouraging free-thinking, there was erected in the midst of this free country a dianoetic academy, or seminary for free-thinkers, provided with retired chambers, and galleries, and shady walks and groves, where, after seven years spent in silence and meditation, a man might commence a genuine free-thinker, and from that time forward, have license to think what he pleased, and a badge to distinguish him from counterfeits.