If those to whom power is delegated do well, they will be respected: if not, they will be despised; and with regard to those to whom no power is delegated, but who assume it, the rational world can know nothing of them.

In despotic governments wars are the effect of pride; but in those governments in which they become the means of taxation, they acquire thereby a more permanent promptitude.

The so much boasted constitution of England...is imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable of producing what it seems to promise...

The christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun.

Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before.

Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of ancient mythologists, accomodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and yet it remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.