It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy.

There is something absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.

It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves.

Ye that dare oppose, not only tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!

He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.

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.

Government is a necessary evil