You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.
Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.
God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.
The true source of our sufferings has been our timidity.
National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman.
Those who trade liberty for security have neither.
America is destined to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs.
I had heard my father say that he never knew a piece of land run away or break.
Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.
I never engaged in public affairs for my own interest, pleasure, envy, jealousy, avarice or ambition, or even the desire of fame.
The balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property in land.
The people, when they have been unchecked, have been as unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous, and cruel, as any king or senate possessed of uncontrollable power. The majority has eternally, and without one exception, usurped over the rights of the minority.
If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?
I would quarrel with both parties, and with every individual of each, before I would subjugate my understanding, or prostitute my tongue or pen to either.
This oration will be read five hundred years hence with as much rapture as it was heard. It ought to be read at the end of every century, and indeed at the end of every year, forever and ever.
Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made between man and brute.
The happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.
That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience.
The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.
Shall we have recourse to the art of printing? But this has not destroyed property or aristocracy or corporations or paper wealth in England or America, or diminished the influence of either; on the contrary, it has multiplied aristocracy and diminished democracy.