Men not living to what they know, cannot blame God, that they know no more.

Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavour to warp and spoil it to their turn.

It is certain that the most natural and human government is that of consent, for that binds freely, ... when men hold their liberty by true obedience to rules of their own making.

Next to God, thy parents.

There is nothing of which we are apt to be so lavish as of time, and about which we ought to be more solicitous; since without it we can do nothing in this world.

Inquiry is human; blind obedience brutal. Truth never loses by the one but often suffers by the other.

True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.