There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.
Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.
Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.
No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.
It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.
The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.
And what is the greatest number? Number one.
It's when we start working together that the real healing takes place... it's when we start spilling our sweat, and not our blood.
The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.
Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.
Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.
It is a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.
Men often act knowingly against their interest.
To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential to being a sound, believing Christian.
Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.
A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow real poverty.
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
Everything in the world is purchased by labor.
Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.
Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.
