There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive.

Well, Page, I do wish the Devil had old Cooke, for I am sure I never was so tired of an old dull scoundrel in my life ... But the old-fellows say we must read to gain knowledge; and gain knowledge to make us happy and be admired. Mere jargon! Is there any such thing as happiness in this world? No.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.

I find as I grow older that I love those most whom I loved first.

Legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property... Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.

Government as well as religion has furnished its schisms, its persecutions and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people.

We never repent of having eaten too little.