In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.

The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear from thrust back, by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.

Men and governments must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.

All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.

Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.

Belief, thus, in the supernatural, great as are the services which it rendered in the early stages of human development, cannot be considered to be any longer required, either for enabling us to know what is right and wrong in social morality, or for supplying us with motives to do right and to abstain from wrong.

The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it.