"Talents is a creation of society rather than a gift of nature; it is an accumulated capital of which the recipient is only the guardian. Without society, without education and powerful assistance which it gives, the finest nature would be inferior to the most ordinary capacities even in the rare as where it ought to shine."

“If God should descend to earth and come to live among us, we could not love him unless he became like us or give him anything unless he produced something or listen to him unless he proved us mistaken or worship him unless he manifested his power. All the laws of our nature, affective, economic, and intellectual, would prevent us from treating him as we treat other men, that is, according to reason, justice, and equity. From this I infer that if God ever put himself into immediate communication with man, he would have to become a man.”

“All parties without exception, when they seek for power, are varieties of absolutism.”

“I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world.”

“I have found more peace in the knowledge of truth than anger in the feeling of oppression, and the most precious fruit that I could want to collect in this memoir would be to inspire my readers with that peace of mind arising from the clear perception of evil and its causes.”

“AXIOM. — Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own.”

“The purchaser draws boundaries, fences himself in, and says, “This is mine; each one by himself, each one for himself.” Here, then, is a piece of land upon which, henceforth, no one has a right to step, save the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save the proprietor and his servants. Let these sales multiply, and soon the people — who have been neither able nor willing to sell, and who have received none of the proceeds of the sale — will have nowhere to rest, no place of shelter, no ground to till. They will die of hunger at the proprietor’s door, on the edge of that property which was their birthright; and the proprietor, watching them die, will exclaim, “So perish idlers and vagrants!”