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.

Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.

My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.

Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.

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.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

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 earned. A common case.

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 must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

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.

Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.

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 Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.

Let us tenderly and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.

The happiness of society is the end of government.

The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.