Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

There cannot any one moral rule be proposed whereof a man may not justly demand a reason. Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.

Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing, without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well hope to make a good painter, or musician, extempore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker, or a strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists.

The visible mark of extraordinary wisdom and power appear so plainly in all the works of creation.

That which parents should take care of... is to distinguish between the wants of fancy, and those of nature.

I am sure, zeal or love for truth can never permit falsehood to be used in the defense of it.

There is no such way to gain admittance, or give defence to strange and absurd Doctrines, as to guard them round about with Legions of obscure, doubtful, and undefin'd Words.