“It is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside than to occupy a cold bleak hill and sleep under frost and snow without cloaths or blankets.”

“I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy.”

“Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.”

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”

“Is the consideration of a little dirty pelf, to individuals, to be placed in competition with the essential rights & liberties of the present generation, & of millions yet unborn? shall a few designing men for their own aggrandizement, and to gratify their own avarice, overset the goodly fabric we have been rearing at the expence of so much time, blood, & treasure? and shall we at last become the victems of our own abominable lust of gain? Forbid it heaven! forbid it all, & every state in the union! by enacting & enforcing, efficatious laws for checking the growth of these monstrous evils, & restoring matters in some degree to the pristine state they were in at the commencement of the War. Our cause is noble. It is the cause of Mankind! and the danger to it springs from ourselves—Shall we slumber & sleep then while we should be punishing those miscreants who have brought these troubles upon us, & who are aiming to continue us in them? While we should be striving to fill our Battalions—and devising ways and means to appreciate the currency—On the credit of which every thing depends? I hope not—let vigorous measures be adopted—not to limit the price of articles—for this I conceive is inconsistent with the very nature of things, & impracticable in itself—but to punish speculators—forestallers—& extortioners—and above all—to sink the money by heavy Taxes—To promote public & private Œconomy—encourage Manufactures &ca—Measures of this sort gone heartily into by the several states will strike at once at the root of all our misfortunes, & give the coup-de-grace to British hope of subjugating this great Continent, either by their Arms or their Arts—The first as I have before observed they acknowledge is unequal to the task—the latter I am sure will be so if we are not lost to every thing that is good & virtuous.”

“We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience. ”

“Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty. In this sense it is, that your Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.”

“Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. I had hoped that liberal and enlightened thought would have reconciled the Christians so that their religious fights would not endanger the peace of Society.”

“Saya harap, saya selalu memiliki cukup keteguhan dan cukup kebajikan untuk memelihara gelar yang saya anggap paling mengagumkan, yaitu watak sebagai orang jujur.”

“A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?”

“Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”

“The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church. Ferdinand Magellan, Portuguese and Spanish explorer”

“Be not glad at the misfortune of another, though he may be your enemy.”

“My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.”

“I regret exceedingly that the disputes between the protestants and Roman Catholics should be carried to the serious alarming height mentioned in your letters. Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause; and I was not without hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy of the present age would have put an effectual stop to contentions of this kind.