Error is to be pitied and pardoned: it is the weakness of human nature. But vice is a foul blemish, not pardonable in any character.

It is a principle that the right to a thing gives a right to the means without which it could not be used, that is to say, that the means follow their end.

Fear can only prevail when victims are ignorant of the facts.

Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree (for all forbid us to steal, murder, plunder, or bear false witness), and that we should not intermeddle with the particular dogmas in which all religions differ, and which are totally unconnected with morality.

Taste cannot be controlled by law.

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.

Hemp is one of the greatest, most important substances of our nation