A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent may take away the rights of the other forty-nine

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

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of Mankind

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold, is for people of good conscience to remain silent

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health, no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no pleasure can be enjoyed by society

Mankind is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed

Never spend your money before you have earned it

Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain

Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits that favor that theory

When we get piled upon each other in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition