To Be Is To Be

Of All Men Living [priests] Are Our Greatest Enemies. If It Were Possible, They Would Extinguish The Very Light Of Nature, Turn The World Into A Dungeon, And Keep Mankind For Ever In Chains And Darkness.

All Those Who Write Either Explicitly Or By Insinuation Against The Dignity, Freedom, And Immortality Of The Human Soul, May So Far Forth Be Justly Said To Unhinge The Principles Of Morality, And Destroy The Means Of Making Men Reasonably Virtuous.

Whenever I Attempt To Frame A Simple Idea Of Time, Abstracted From The Succession Of Ideas In My Mind, Which Flows Uniformly, And Is Participated By All Beings, I Am Lost And Embrangled In Inextricable Difficulties.

Man Is An Animal, Formidable Both From His Passions And His Reason; His Passions Often Urging Him To Great Evils, And His Reason Furnishing Means To Achieve Them. To Train This Animal, And Make Him Amenable To Order; To Inure Him To A Sense Of Justice And Virtue, To Withhold Him From Ill Courses By Fear, And Encourage Him In His Duty By Hopes; In Short, To Fashion And Model Him For Society, Hath Been The Aim Of Civil And Religious Institutions; And, In All Times, The Endeavour Of Good And Wise Men. The Aptest Method For Attaining This End, Hath Been Always Judged A Proper Education.

A Mind At Liberty To Reflect On Its Own Observations, If It Produce Nothing Useful To The World, Seldom Fails Of Entertainment To Itself.