The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that... and all the glory of it.
The four most miserable years of my life . . .
Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half th...
A government of laws, and not of men.
I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavis...
Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.
The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.
I, poor creature, worn out with scribbling for my bread and my liberty, low in spirits and weak in health, must leave others to wear the laurels which I have sown, others to eat the bread which I have...
In esse I am nothing in posse I am everything.
Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, '...
I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.
Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
Fear is the foundation of most governments.
Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.
The happiness of society is the end of government.
Had I been chosen president again I am certain I could not have lived another year.
Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
We shall convince France and the world, that we are not a degraded people, humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear and a sense of inferiority, fitted to be the miserable instruments of foreign infl...
My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.