When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.
Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.
It is neither wealth nor splendor but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.
A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.--The Fruit Hunters
I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.
If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.
So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.
My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
Equal rights for all special privileges for none.
It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.
I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the ri...
I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the reme...
If God is just, I tremble for my country.
Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.
A republican government is slow to move yet when once in motion its momentum becomes irresistible.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness...