One of the prerogatives by which man is eminently distinguished from all other living beings inhabiting this globe of earth, consists in the gift of reason.

Because we live on a globe, wherever you are, you are on top of the world.

Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.

How are the faculties of man to be best developed and his happiness secured? The state of a king is not favorable to this, nor the state of the noble and rich men of the earth. All this is artificial life, the inventions of vanity and grasping ambition, by which we have spoiled the man of nature and of pure, simple, and undistorted impulses.

The real or supposed rights of man are of two kinds, active and passive; the right in certain cases to do as we list; and the right we possess to the forbearance or assistance of other men.

The value of a man is in his intrinsic qualities: in that of which power cannot strip him and which adverse fortune cannot take away. That for which he is indebted to circumstances is mere trapping and tinsel.