Virtue is not hereditary.

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence.

The representative system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom where it can be found.

Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe.

One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise, she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.

Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.

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.