“The nation was literally fighting for its literal life— ‘they or we.’ Anything went, and what ‘anything’ was, what enormities it embraced, depended entirely on the turn of the battle.”
“To this strange doctrine, viz. That in the state of nature every one has the executive power of the law of nature, I doubt not but it will be objected, that it is unreasonable for men to be judges in their own cases, that self-love will make men partial to themselves and their friends: and on the other side, that ill nature, passion and revenge will carry them too far in punishing others; and hence nothing but confusion and disorder will follow, and that therefore God hath certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence of men.”
“Freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature is, to be under no other restraint but the law of nature.”
“Remember that your dominating thoughts attract,
through a definite law of nature, by the shortest and most
convenient route, their physical counterpart. Be careful what
your thoughts dwell upon.”