It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn.

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

Power is not happiness. Security and peace are more to be desired than a name at which nations tremble.

As long as parents and teachers in general shall fall under the established rule, it is clear that politics and modes of government will educate and infect us all. They poison our minds, before we can resist, or so much as suspect their malignity. Like the barbarous directors of the Eastern seraglios, they deprive us of our vitality, and fit us for their despicable employment from the cradle.

The subtleties of mathematics defecate the grossness of our apprehension, and supply the elements of a sounder and severer logic.

I shall attempt to prove two things: first, that the actions and dispositions of mankind are the offspring of circumstances and events, and not of any original determination that they bring into the world; and, secondly, that the great stream of our voluntary actions essentially depends, not upon the direct and immediate impulses of sense, but upon the decisions of the understanding.

Above all we should not forget, that government is an evil, an usurpation upon the private judgment and individual conscience of mankind.