The plea is, in a great measure, false; they had no permission to catch and enslave people who never injured them. - Thomas Paine

To believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the Christian faith at once little and ridiculous; and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air.

Ignorance is of a peculiar nature: once dispelled, it is impossible to reestablish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant. The mind, in discovering truth, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it.

nothing flatters vanity, or confirms obstinacy in Kings more than repeated petitioning