All men have opinions, but few think.

Where the people are well educated, the art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of Plato.

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.

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.

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

Doth the Reality of sensible things consist in being perceived? or, is it something distinct from their being perceived, and that bears no relation to the mind?

That food nourishes, sleep refreshes, and fire warms us; that to sow in the seed-time is the way to reap in the harvest, and, in general, that to obtain such or such ends, such or such means are conducive, all this we know, not by discovering any necessary connexion between our ideas, but only by the observation of the settled laws of nature, without which we should be all in uncertainty and confusion, and a grown man no more know how to manage himself in the affairs of life than an infant just born.