It's When We Start Working

An Established Government Has An Infinite Advantage, By That Very Circumstance Of Its Being Established--the Bulk Of Mankind Being Governed By Authority, Not Reason, And Never Attributing Authority To Anything That Has Not The Recommendation Of Antiquity.

It Affords A Violent Prejudice Against Almost Every Science, That No Prudent Man, However Sure Of His Principles, Dares Prophesy Concerning Any Event, Or Foretell The Remote Consequences Of Things.

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.

Examine The Religious Principles Which Have, In Fact, Prevailed In The World. You Will Scarcely Be Persuaded That They Are Other Than Sick Men's Dreams.

I Say Then, That Belief Is Nothing But A More Vivid, Lively, Forcible, Firm, Steady Conception Of An Object, Than What The Imagination Alone Is Ever Able To Attain. This Variety Of Terms, Which May Seem So Unphilosophical, Is Intended Only To Express That Act Of The Mind, Which Renders Realities, Or What Is Taken For Such, More Present To Us Than Fictions, Causes Them To Weigh More In The Thought, And Gives Them A Superior Influence On The Passions And Imagination.