“Be polite to all, but intimate with few.”

“Never spend your money before you have earned it.”

“[It is a] happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrant.”

“Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.”

“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them.”

“I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.”

“The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. . . . [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government.

“You are now old enough to know how very important to your future life will be the manner in which you employ your present time”

“I cannot live without books.”

“The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave. ”

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.”

“It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterward.”

“Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.”

“Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on.

“...never [enter] into dispute or argument with another. I never saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude, & shooting one another. ... When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine; why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion? ... There are two classes of disputants most frequently to be met with among us. The first is of young students, just entered the threshold of science, with a first view of its outlines, not yet filled up with the details & modifications which a further progress would bring to their knoledge. The other consists of the ill-tempered & rude men in society, who have taken up a passion for politics. ... Consider yourself, when with them, as among the patients of Bedlam, needing medical more than moral counsel. Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially on politics. In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal.”