Wisdom degenerates in governments as governments increase in age.

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

War is the gambling table of governments, and citizens the dupes of the game.

Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

The protection of a man's person is more sacred than the protection of his property.

Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?