Men fight for freedom; then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.

The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It had only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican.

Were I to be the founder of a new sect, I would call them Apiarians, and, after the example of the bee, advise them to extract the honey of every sect. My fundamental principle would be ... that we are to be saved by our good works which are within our power, and not by our faith which is not within our power.

I trust there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.

The fumes of the most disordered imaginations were recorded in their religious code, as special communications of the Deity; and as it could not but happen that, in the course of ages, events would now and then turn up to which some of these vague rhapsodies might be accommodated by the aid of allegories, figures, types, and other tricks upon words, they have not only preserved their credit with the Jews of all subsequent times, but are the foundation of much of the religions of those who have schismatised from them.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

An hereditary aristocracy... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world.