Our lives our guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes.

Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race.

If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done from the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest.

To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances.

When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.

The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.

No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.