“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is Just”

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

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”

“May I never get too busy in my own affairs that I fail to respond to the needs of others with kindness and compassion.”

“… the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”

“Everything yields to diligence”

“If Americans desire to be both ignorant and free, they want what never has been and what never will be.”

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”

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

“The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money”

“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.”

“I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.”

“The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrant. It is its natural manure.”

“I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man's milk and restorative cordial.”

“...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.”