“Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace”

“The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.”

“He who knows best knows how little he knows.”

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

“...never [enter] into dispute or argument with another. I never saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude, & shooting one another. ... When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine; why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion? ... There are two classes of disputants most frequently to be met with among us. The first is of young students, just entered the threshold of science, with a first view of its outlines, not yet filled up with the details & modifications which a further progress would bring to their knoledge. The other consists of the ill-tempered & rude men in society, who have taken up a passion for politics. ... Consider yourself, when with them, as among the patients of Bedlam, needing medical more than moral counsel. Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially on politics. In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal.”

“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.”

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have

“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...”

“When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.”

“All are dead, and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who know us not.”

“Nothing is more likely than that [the] enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us then go on perfecting it by adding by way of amendment to the Constitution those powers which time and trial show are still wanting”

“There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.”

“Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.”

“[Christianity is] the most ... perverted system that ever shone on man.”

“Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred”