“Is not an hereditary nobility inconsistent with liberty? I will ask more, is it not inconsistent with public virtue?”

Letter to Arthur Campbell (7 May 1783)

What Would You Substitute for the Bible as a Moral Guide? (1900)
Context: What then is, or can be called, a moral guide? The shortest possible answer is one word: Intelligence. We want the experience of mankind, the true history of the race. We want the history of intellectual development, of the growth of the ethical, of the idea of justice, of conscience, of charity, of self-denial. We want to know the paths and roads that have been traveled by the human mind. These facts in general, these histories in outline, the results reached, the conclusions formed, the principles evolved, taken together, would form the best conceivable moral guide. We cannot depend on what are called “inspired books,” or the religions of the world. These religions are based on the supernatural, and according to them we are under obligation to worship and obey some supernatural being, or beings. All these religions are inconsistent with intellectual liberty. They are the enemies of thought, of investigation, of mental honesty. They destroy the manliness of man. They promise eternal rewards for belief, for credulity, for what they call faith. This is not only absurd, but it is immoral.

1890s, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

VIII, line 20.
Compare : We'll shine in more substantial honours, And to be noble we'll be good.
Thomas Percy, Winifreda (1720).
Satires, Satire VI
Variant: Nobility is the one only virtue.

1780s, Letter to R. Lushington (1786)

Source: 1990s, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (1997), p. 106
Context: These soldiers were using the word slavery in the same way that Americans in 1776 had used it to describe their subordination to Britain. Unlike many slaveholders in the age of Thomas Jefferson, Confederate soldiers from slaveholding families expressed no feelings of embarrassment or inconsistency in fighting for their own liberty while holding other people in slavery. Indeed, white supremacy and the right of property in slaves were at the core of the ideology for which Confederate soldiers fought.

"The Necessary Contradictions of a Conservative", The Daily Dish (13 November 2013) http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/11/13/the-necessary-contradictions-of-a-conservative/

1770s, Common Sense (1776)

Patheos, Anti-theist Answers to Christian Questions http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/11/22/anti-theist-answers-to-christian-questions/ (November 22, 2015)