A bad cause will ever be supported by bad means and bad men.

The Christian religion begins with a dream and ends with a murder.

We do not admit the authority of the church with respect to its pretended infallibility, its manufactured miracles, its setting itself up to forgive sins. It was by propagating that belief and supporting it with fire that she kept up her temporal power.

Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.

Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.

We feel something like respect for consistency even in error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice; but the vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable.

Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.