Security, the chief pretence of civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs over everyone's head.

All progress means war with Society.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior.

The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them.

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.