Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can’t be taken on its own merits.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.

There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.