no people can be both ignorant and free.

I should . . . prefer swallowing one incomprehensibility rather than two. It requires one effort only to admit the single incomprehensibility of matter endowed with thought, and two to believe, first that of an existence called spirit, of which we have neither evidence nor idea, and then secondly how that spirit, which has neither extension nor solidity, can put material organs into motion.

No one, I hope, can doubt my wish to see... all mankind exercising self-government, and capable of exercising it. But the question is not what we wish, but what is practicable.

Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to God alone.

We must use a good deal of economy in our wood, never cutting down new, where we can make the old do.

I leave the world and its affairs to the young and energetic, and resign myself to their care, of whom I have endeavored to take care when young.

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature.