All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will, and government by self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others. All the moralities tell them that it is their nature to live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but in their affections.

Every established fact which is too bad to admit of any other defence is always presented to us as an injunction of religion.

Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.

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

The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.

The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.

If religious belief be indeed so necessary to mankind, as we are continually assured that it is, there is great reason to lament, that the intellectual grounds of it should require to be backed by moral bribery or subornation of the understanding.