These are the times that try men's souls.

One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.

The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.

To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.

I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.

My mind is my own church.

That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.

Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.

It is an affront to treat falsehood with complaisance.

Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.

Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.

Every religion is good that teaches man to be good; and I know of none that instructs him to be bad.

He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.

My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Time makes more converts than reason.