"For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception…. If any one, upon serious and unprejudic’d reflection thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu’d, which he calls himself; tho’ I am certain there is no such principle in me"

"Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few."

"Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived."

"Truth springs from argument amongst friends."

"The truth springs from arguments amongst friends."

"A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker."

"To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive."

"It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom."

"The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster."

"The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst."

"The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one."

"We find in the course of nature that though the effects be many, the principles from which they arise are commonly few and simple, and that it is the sign of an unskilled naturalist to have recourse to a different quality in order to explain every different operation."