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.

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

A celebrated north country apostle, who, after Calvin had damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, had contrived a scheme for damning ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin.

There is no sphere in which a human being can be supposed to act where one mode of reasoning will not, in every given instance, be more reasonable than any other mode. That mode the being is bound by every principle of justice to pursue.

The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.

Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny.

My thoughts will be taken up with the future or the past, with what is to come or what has been. Of the present there is necessarily no image.