If a multiplicity of religions is harmful to the State, that is only because one religion will not tolerate the other but wants rather to swallow it up by dint of persecution. . . the whole disorder springs not from toleration but from non-toleration. . .
It is impossible in our present condition to know with certainty whether or not what appears to us to be the truth. . . is absolute truth; the best we can do is to be fully convinced that we hold to absolute truth, that we are right and other people are wrong. . . (1686-87)
The toleration of those that differ from others in matters of religion, is so agreeable to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to the genuine reason of mankind, that it seems monstrous for men to be so blind as not to perceive the necessity and advantage of it in so clear a light. (1689-93)
I confess that histories are replete with religious wars: but on close examination, it is apparent that they were caused, not by a multiplicity of religions, but by the spirit of intolerance that ran rife in the religion that considered itself dominant.
(1721)
Superstition born in paganism, and adopted by Judaism, invested the Christian Church from earliest times. . .
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. There is no difficulty here. But the government! But the magistrates! But the princes!
(1764)
The miracles of the primitive church, after obtaining the sanction of ages, have been lately attacked in a very free and ingenious inquiry; which, though it has met with the most favorable reception from the Public, appears to have excited a general scandal among the divines. . .
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
It is not long since the ridiculous and threadbare question was agitated. . . who was the greatest man. . .? Somebody said that it must undoubtedly be Sir Isaac Newton. This man was certainly right. . . It is the man who sways our minds by the prevalence of reason and the native force of truth. . .
Very few people in England read Descartes, whose works indeed are now useless. . . Sir Isaac Newton is allowed every advantage, whilst Descartes is not indulged a single one. . .
(1733)
Newton. . . gave to philosophy a method it seems obliged to retain. This great genius saw that it was time to banish from physics all vague conjectures and hypotheses. . . that this science had to be submitted exclusively to experiments and to geometry. . . (1760)
David Hume
A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. . .
(1768)
whoever will deign to consult common sense upon religious opinions. . . will easily perceive, that these opinions have no foundation; that all religion is an edifice in the air; that theology is only the ignorance of natural causes reduced to system. . .
Man, void of knowledge, does not enjoy his reason; without reason and knowledge, he is a savage, every instant liable to be hurried into crimes. . . The less men reason, the more wicked they are.
(1772)
There does not exist any religious system, or supernatural extravagance, which is not founded on an ignorance of the laws of nature. The inventors and defenders of these absurdities could not forsee the successive progress of the human mind.
(1794)
We have seen that our Encyclopedie could only have been the endeavor of a philosophical century; that this age has dawned. . .
All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings. . . We have for quite some time needed a reasoning age when men would no longer seek the rules in classical authors but in nature. . . (1760)
The rapid progress the sciences now make, occasions my regret sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the heights to which may be carried in a hundred years, the power of man over matter. . .
There are four distinct states which mankind passes through. 1st, the age of Hunters; 2nd, the age of Sheperds; 3rd, the age of Agriculture; 4th, the age of Commerce.
If one should suppose ten or twelve persons of different sexes settled in an uninhabited island, the first method they would fall upon for their sustenance would be to support themselves by the wild fruits and wild animals which the country afforded. . . (1762)