To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality

It can do truth no service to blind the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion of the noblest and most valuable moral teaching has been the work not only of men who did not know, but of men who knew and rejected the Christian faith.

The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious.

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.

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

The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it

Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.