In a general view, there are few conquests that repay the charge of making them, and mankind are pretty well convinced that it can never be worth the… - Thomas Paine

That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology. [...] It is not among the least of the mischiefs that the christian system has done to the world, that it has abandoned the original and beautiful system of theology, like a beautiful innocent to distress and reproach, to make room for the hag of superstition.

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise.

The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.