 Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society. |
| When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more. |
| 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 slavish part of mankind all over the earth. |
| The happiness of society is the end of government. |
| While all other sciences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill - little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago. |
| Genius is sorrow's child. |
| Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination - everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell. |
| I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. |
| A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man. |
| Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws. |
| There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live. Topics: Education |
| Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write. |
| In politics the middle way is none at all. Topics: Politics |
| Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty. |
| Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases. |
| There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. Topics: Government |
| My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived. |
| I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman. |
| All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation. |
| The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries. |
