Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Truth is but approved facts.
Credulity is always ridiculous.
No man can see his own prejudices.
Man has been adjudged a social animal.
Awaken its powers, and it will respect itself.
Persecution for opinion is the master vice of society.
The sciences have ever been the surest guides to virtue.
the language of truth is too simple for inexperienced ears.
The world is full of religion, and full of misery and crime.
The knowledge of one generation is the ignorance of the next.
I shall say, that I feel myself virtuous, because my soul is at rest.
What were the glories of the sun, if we knew not the gloom of darkness?
Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.
Pets, like their owners, tend to expand a little over the Christmas period.
Speak of change, and the world is in alarm. And yet where do we not see change?
Do not confound noise with fame. The man who is remembered, is not always honored.
I am neither Jew nor Gentile, Mahomedan nor Theist; I am but a member of the human family.
Look into the nature of things. Search out the grounds of your opinions, the for and against.
Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you.
Religion may be defined thus: a belief in, and homage rendered to, existences unseen and causes unknown.
The condition of women affords in all countries the best criterion by which to judge the character of men.
You have heard of, and studied various systems of philosophy; but real philosophy is opposed to all systems.
Equality! Where is it, if not in education? Equal rights! They cannot exist without equality of instruction.
If they exert it not for good, they will for evil; if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance.
And when did mere preaching do any good? Put something in the place of these things. Fill the vacuum of the mind.
Of the thousands who have paid homage to virtue, barely one has thought to inspect the pedestal on which it stands.
Let us unite on the safe and sure ground of fact and experiment, and we can never err; yet better, we can never differ.
A necessary consequent of religious belief is the attaching ideas of merit to that belief, and of demerit to its absence.
Moral truth, resting entirely upon the ascertained consequences of actions, supposes a process of observation and reasoning.
the mode of delivering a truth makes, for the most part, as much impression on the mind of the listener as the truth itself.
To give liberty to a slave before he understands its value is, perhaps, rather to impose a penalty than to bestow a blessing.
There is but one honest limit to the rights of a sentient being; it is where they touch the rights of another sentient being.
It is in vain that we would circumscribe the power of one half of our race, and that half by far the most important and influential.
Credulity is always a ridiculous, often a dangerous failing: it has made of many a clever man, a fool; and of many a good man, a knave.
These will vary in every human being; but knowledge is the same for every mind, and every mind may and ought to be trained to receive it.
Instead of establishing facts, we have to overthrow errors; instead of ascertaining what is, we have to chase from our imaginations what is not.
Trust me, there are as many ways of living as there are men, and one is no more fit to lead another, than a bird to lead a fish, or a fish a quadruped.
... the happiness of a people is the only rational object of government, and the only object for which a people, free to choose, can have a government at all.
Fathers and husbands! do ye not also understand this fact? Do ye not see how, in the mental bondage of your wives and fair companions, ye yourselves are bound?
The hired preachers of all sects, creeds, and religions, never do, and never can, teach any thing but what is in conformity with the opinions of those who pay them.
We have ... dreamed so much and observed so little, that our imaginations have grown larger than the world we live in, and our judgments have dwindled down to a point.
The simplest principles become difficult of practice, when habits, formed in error, have been fixed by time, and the simplest truths hard to receive when prejudice has warped the mind.
He who lives in the single exercise of his mental faculties, however usefully or curiously directed, is equally an imperfect animal with the man who knows only the exercise of muscles.
The best road to correct reasoning is by physical science; the way to trace effects to causes is through physical science; the only corrective, therefore, of superstition is physical science.
It has already been observed that women, wherever placed, however high or low in the scale of cultivation, hold the destinies of human kind. Men will ever rise or fall to the level of the other sex.
Love of power more frequently originates in vanity than pride (two qualities, by the way, which are often confounded) and is, consequently, yet more peculiarly the sin of little than of great minds.
Many are called impious, not for having a worse, but a different religion from their neighbors; and many atheistical, not for the denying of God, but for thinking somewhat peculiarly concerning him.
But while human liberty has engaged the attention of the enlightened, and enlisted the feelings of the generous of all civilized nations, may we not enquire if this liberty has been rightly understood?
However novel it may appear, I shall venture the assertion, that, until women assume the place in society which good sense and good feeling alike assign to them, human improvement must advance but feebly.
... it would be impossible for women to stand in higher estimation than they do here. The deference that is paid to them at all times and in all places has often occasioned me as much surprise as pleasure.