Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion.

If you have any duty which must be done, and it seems disagreeable, do it promptly and have it over.

The fantastical idea of virtue and the public good being a sufficient security to the state against the commission of crimes, which you say you have heard insisted on by some, I assure you was never mine.

Freedom [is] the first-born daughter of science

Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?

Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice.

Our ancestors ... were laborers, not lawyers.