The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments, of those distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue, are complete sceptics in religion.

It is conceivable that religion may be morally useful without being intellectually sustainable.

A person's taste is as much his own peculiar concern as his opinion or his purse.

Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.

The demand for commodities is not the demand for labor.

The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.

Language is the light of the mind