Instead of the function of governing, for which it is radically unfit, the proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the government.

On religion in particular, the time appears to me to have come, when it is a duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have, on mature consideration, satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false, but hurtful, to make their dissent known.

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

The true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals; claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to everyone else; regarding command of any kind as an exceptional neccessity, and in all cases a temporary one.

Money is a machine for doing quickly and commodiously what would be done, though less quickly and commodiously, without it.

Each undervalues that part of the materials of thought with which he is not familiar.

It is part of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible, are called forth in human beings towards those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that power.