“القوة القانونية للحكومة يجب ان تتوقف على كبح الأفعال المؤذية للمواطنين تجاه الاخرين فقط . لا يوجد أذى لجارى ان قلت هناك أله واحد ، او هناك عشرين أله . هذا الفعل ليس سرقة لمحفظته او كسر لقدمه”

“Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in the people.”

“Half a loaf is better than no bread” 

“I am a sect by myself, as far as I know.”

“An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.” 

“Self-love is no part of morality. Indeed it is exactly its counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of virtue leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.”

“Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”

“The opinions and beliefs of men follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds.”

“I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.” 

“Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” 

“It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterward.”

“Let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.”

“I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too. ”

“That one generation of men in civil society have no right to make acts to bind another, is a truth that cannot be confused.”

“Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.”