Few men think, yet all will have opinions.

But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park [. . .] and nobody by to perceive them. [...] The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived; the trees therefore are in the garden [. . .] no longer than while there is somebody by to perceive them.

We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.

Religion is the centre which unites, and the cement which connects the several parts of members of the political body.

I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those things I actually see and feel.

Whatever the world thinks, he who hath not much meditated upon God, the human soul, and the summum bonum, may possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman.

Of all men living [priests] are our greatest enemies. If it were possible, they would extinguish the very light of nature, turn the world into a dungeon, and keep mankind for ever in chains and darkness.