"All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth - in a word, all those bodies which compose the frame of the world - have not any subsistence without a mind."

"If we admit a thing so extraordinary as the creation of this world, it should seem that we admit something strange, and odd, and new to human apprehension, beyond any other miracle whatsoever."

"That thing of hell and eternal punishment is the most absurd, as well as the most disagreeable thought that ever entered into the head of mortal man."

"From my own being, and from the dependency I find in myself and my ideas, I do, by an act of reason, necessarily infer the existence of a God, and of all created things in the mind of God."

"We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see."

"He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave."

"That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow."

"Many things, for aught I know, may exist, whereof neither I nor any other man hath or can have any idea or notion whatsoever."

"Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward pretence to it; but the free-thinker alone is truly free."

"Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few."

"So long as I confine my thoughts to my own ideas divested of words, I do not see how I can be easily mistaken."

"I had rather be an oyster than a man, the most stupid and senseless of animals."

"The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense."

"A mind at liberty to reflect on its own observations, if it produce nothing useful to the world, seldom fails of entertainment to itself."

"The eye by long use comes to see even in the darkest cavern: and there is no subject so obscure but we may discern some glimpse of truth by long poring on it."