"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket no…"

"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

"The only security against error is the freedom of inquiry."

"I think that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."

"I do not know whether it is a greater proof of the wisdom or the folly of man, that he is so apt to be caught by the same bait, and to fall into the same snare, from generation to generation."