“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

Source: City of Glass

Pensées Philosophiques (1746)

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 18. How I came to Spaceland, and What I Saw There
Context: Once more I felt myself rising through space. It was even as the Sphere had said. The further we receded from the object we beheld, the larger became the field of vision. My native city, with the interior of every house and every creature therein, lay open to my view in miniature. We mounted higher, and lo, the secrets of the earth, the depths of mines and inmost caverns of the hills, were bared before me.Awestruck at the sight of the mysteries of the earth, thus unveiled before my unworthy eye, I said to my Companion, "Behold, I am become as a God. For the wise men in our country say that to see all things, or as they express it, OMNIVIDENCE, is the attribute of God alone." There was something of scorn in the voice of my Teacher as he made answer: "Is it so indeed? Then the very pick-pockets and cut-throats of my country are to be worshiped by your wise men as being Gods: for there is not one of them that does not see as much as you see now. But trust me, your wise men are wrong."

Review of Women of Wonder, anthology edited by Pamela Sargent https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/by-women-about-women, 2015 <br class="br">2010s

DB inscription http://www.avesta.org/op/op.htm#db1, COLUMN 4, 63. (4.61-7.)

Source: The Golden Lily

218
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part II

Prometheus
Poems (1851), Prometheus

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 161.