There Is No Virtue In Penance And

Apart From Moral Conduct, All That Man Thinks Himself Able To Do In Order To Become Acceptable To God Is Mere Superstition And Religious Folly.

There Is No Virtue In Penance And Fasting Which Waste The Body; They Are Only Fanatical And Monkish.

What Can I Know? What Ought I To Do? What May I Hope?

Even If A Civil Society Were To Be Dissolved By The Consent Of All Its Members (e.g., If A People Inhabiting An Island Decided To Separate And Disperse Throughout The World), The Last Murderer Remaining In Prison Would First Have To Be Executed, So That Each Has Done To Him What His Deeds Deserve And Blood Guilt Does Not Cling To The People For Not Having Insisted Upon This Punishment; For Otherwise The People Can Be Regarded As Collaborators In His Public Violation Of Justice.

Even Philosophers Will Praise War As Ennobling Mankind, Forgetting The Greek Who Said: 'war Is Bad In That It Begets More Evil Than It Kills.'