The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.

The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the state governments, in times of peace and security.

The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.

I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.

A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States.

War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.

The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.

A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.

Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.

Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.