It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradation we surmount the force of local prejudice as we enlarge our acquaintance with the world. - Thomas Paine

The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity, respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into antiquity. They do not go the whole way. They stop in some of the intermediate stages of an hundred or a thousand years, and produce what was then done, as a rule for the present day. This is no authority at all. If we travel still farther into antiquity, we shall find a direct contrary opinion and practice prevailing; and if antiquity is to be authority, a thousand such authorities may be produced, successively contradicting each other; but if we proceed on, we shall at last come out right; we shall come to the time when man came from the hand of his Maker. What was he then? Man. Man was his high and only title, and a higher cannot be given him.

do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation.

What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; it's dearness only that gives everthing its value.