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" It is a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave. "

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" The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue. "

" Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals. "

" Every wise, just, and mild government, by rendering the condition of its subjects easy and secure, will always abound most in people, as well as in commodities and riches. "

" Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity. "

" Avarice, the spur of industry. "

" Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. "

" No advantages in this world are pure and unmixed. "

" 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. "

" The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst. "

" To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential to being a sound, believing Christian. "

" Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man. "

" Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few. "

" Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding. "

" Accuracy is, in every case, advantageous to beauty, and just reasoning to delicate sentiment. In vain would we exalt the one by depreciating the other. "

" Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it. "

" A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. "

" Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence. "

" It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. "

" To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive. "

" Men often act knowingly against their interest. "

" There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves. "

" It's when we start working together that the real healing takes place... it's when we start spilling our sweat, and not our blood. "

Working Together

" Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge. "

" 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. "

" That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise. "

" Truth springs from argument amongst friends. "

" What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call 'thought'. "

" And what is the greatest number? Number one. "

Greatest Number

" The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster. "

" A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century. "