The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.

It is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge.

How long have you been holding those words in your head, hoping to use them?

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

It is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind, as well as those of the body, to their perfection.

Understanding like the eye; whilst it makes us see and perceive all things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own subject.

Brutes abstract not. -- If it may be doubted, whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas, that way, to any degree; this, I think, I may be positive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to.