If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

Taste cannot be controlled by law.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.

Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.

One man with courage is a majority.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.