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

I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old.

Without health there is no happiness. An attention to health, then, should take the place of every other object.

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.

I rejoice when I hear of young men of virtue and talents, worthy to receive and likely to preserve the splendid inheritance of self- government, which we have acquired and shaped for them.

To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association-the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

Men are disposed to live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to them.