No peace and security among mankind-let alone common friendship-can ever exist as long as people think that governments get their authority from God and that religion is to be propagated by force of arms.

Man is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road.

I pretend not to teach, but to inquire.

For a man's property is not at all secure, though there be good and equitable laws to set the bounds of it, between him and his fellow subjects, if he who commands those subjects, have power to take from any private man, what part he pleases of his property, and use and dispose of it as he thinks good.

In short, herein seems to lie the difference between idiots and madmen, that madmen put wrong ideas together, and so make wrong propositions, but argue and reason right from them: but idiots make very few or no propositions, and reason scarce at all.

It is one thing to persuade, another to command; one thing to press with arguments, another with penalties.

For those who either perceive but dully, or retain the ideas that come into their minds but ill, who cannot readily excite or compound them, will have little matter to think on.