"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be."

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories."

"I cannot live without books."

"There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents."

"Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe."

"Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do."

"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."

"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."

"The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world."

"An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes."

"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

"Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail."

"The most successful war seldom pays for its losses."

"It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape."

"Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence."

"For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security."

"An injured friend is the bitterest of foes."

"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."

"I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another."

"Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

"I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad."

"The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead."

"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing."

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."

"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."

"Power is not alluring to pure minds."

"The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses."

"Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind."

"No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will."

"No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it."

"The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind."

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."

"Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct."

"There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world."

"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."

"As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also."

"In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty."

"Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?"

"To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education."

"History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is."

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

"None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important."

"No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden."

"Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very fast."

"Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching."

"Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it."

"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

"Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."