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Founders, statesmen and world leaders — cited from their collected works.
The figures
This, in the present condition of the world, would be the last corruption of the Church, the utter ruin of the clerical character, the most dangerous shock that the state ever received through a misunderstood arrangement of religion.
They who will not believe that the philosophical fanatics who guide in these matters have long entertained such a design are utterly ignorant of their character and proceedings.
It has made a degrading pensionary establishment, to which no man of liberal ideas or liberal condition will destine his children.
It has punished all prelates: which is to favor the vicious, at least in point of reputation.
But the present ruling power has shown a disposition only to plunder the Church.
The time is fitted for the duty; and it is particularly becoming to show our justice and gratitude, when those who have deserved well of us and of mankind are laboring under popular obloquy and the persecutions of oppressive power.
They seemed to me, beyond the clerical character, liberal and open, with the hearts of gentlemen and men of honor, neither insolent nor servile in their manners and conduct.
They were more fully educated than the military noblesse,--so as by no means to disgrace their profession by ignorance, or by want of fitness for the exercise of their authority.
Undoubtedly, the natural progress of the passions, from frailty to vice, ought to be prevented by a watchful eye and a firm hand.
It will teach posterity not to make war upon either religion or philosophy for the abuse which the hypocrites of both have made of the two most valuable blessings conferred upon us by the bounty of the universal Patron, who in all things…
But history in the nineteenth century, better understood and better employed, will, I trust, teach a civilized posterity to abhor the misdeeds of both these barbarous ages.
Such is the effect of the perversion of history by those who, for the same nefarious purposes, have perverted every other part of learning.
It is thus with all those who, attending only to the shell and husk of history, think they are waging war with intolerance, pride, and cruelty, whilst, under color of abhorring the ill principles of antiquated parties, they are authorizing…
You are terrifying yourselves with ghosts and apparitions, whilst your house is the haunt of robbers.
The spirit transmigrates; and, far from losing its principle of life by the change of its appearance, it is renovated in its new organs with the fresh vigor of a juvenile activity.
Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names,--to the causes of evil, which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear.
A certain quantum of power must always exist in the community, in some hands, and under some appellation.
It may, in the perversion, serve for a magazine, furnishing offensive and defensive weapons for parties in Church and State, and supplying the means of keeping alive or reviving dissensions and animosities, and adding fuel to civil fury.
In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.
Corporate bodies are immortal for the good of the members, but not for their punishment.
