“Too old to plant trees for my own gratification, I shall do it for my posterity.”

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

“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.”

“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government”

“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.”

“I cannot live without books: but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.” 

“Those who expect to be both ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be.” 

“[It is a] happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrant.”

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

“History, by apprising [the people] of the past, will enable them to judge of the future.” 

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

“...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.”

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

“New York, like London, seems to be a cloacina [toilet] of all the depravities of human nature.”

“Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.”