Obey; this may be right; but beware of reverence.... Government is nothing but regulated force; force is its appropriate claim upon your attention. It is the business of individuals to persuade; the tendency of concentrated strength, is only to give consistency and permanence to an influence more compendious than persuasion.

He has no right to his life when his duty calls him to resign it. Other men are bound ... to deprive him of life or liberty, if that should appear in any case to be indispensably necessary to prevent a greater evil.

The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.

If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.

Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.

The proper method for hastening the decay of error, is not, by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself.

No maxim can be more pernicious than that which would teach us to consult the temper of the times, and to tell only so much as we imagine our contemporaries will be able to bear.