I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
I [am] obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, I feel: therefore I exist. I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then. I call them matter. I feel them changing place. This gives me motion. Where there is an absence of matter, I call it void, or nothing, or immaterial space. On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need.
There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
If you want something you’ve never had
You must be willing to do something you’ve never done.
I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.
But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.
I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.