Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

[A]ll churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit.

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

But life, if nothing else, had taught her promises weren't always to be counted on, and what appeared at first a shining chance might end in bitter disappointment.

For (Levi) Grossman, no books feel more like home than C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, which provide the template for what he likes to read—and how he wants to write.

The world meets nobody half way.

True love is mixed up with birdlike squabbles, in which the disputants wound each other to the quick; but a quarrel without animus is, on the contrary, apiece of flattery to the dupe's conceit.

I think the online space can be a free space, in that we are not reliant online on the publishing industry or readers who just don't get it.

[The Bill of Rights is] designed to protect individuals and minorities against the tyranny of the majority, but it's also designed to protect the people against bureaucracy, against the government.

For humans as well as for ships, dark stormy nights are better teachers than tranquil sunny days.

If you want to scale-up, the first thing you have to do is to expand your own team.

All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.

The fruit of the Spirit is not what we can make ourselves do for a moment, But what God makes us to be for a lifetime.