Education has for its object the formation of character. To curb restive propensities, to awaken dormant sentiments, to strengthen the perceptions, and cultivate the tastes, to encourage this feeling and repress that, so as finally to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature, this is alike the aim of parent and teacher.

Progress is not an accident, not a thing within human control, but a beneficent necessity ... due to the working of a universal law. So surely must the things we call evil and immorality disappear; so surely must man become perfect.

There is no origin for the idea of an afterlife, save the conclusion which the savage draws from the notion suggested by dreams.

If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?

Education has for its object to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature-this is alike the aim of parent and teacher.

The greatest of all infidelities is the fear that the truth will be bad.

Religion has been compelled by science to give up one after another of its dogmas. . . .