It is the direction and not the magnitude which is to be taken into consideration.

The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing.

If the present generation, or any other, are disposed to be slaves, it does not lessen the right of the succeeding generation to be free: wrongs cannot have a legal descent.

Men should not petition for rights, but take them

The graceful pride of truth knows no extremes, and preserves, in every latitude of life, the right-angled character of man.

Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured

When I contemplate the natural dignity of man; when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honor and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.