Do not write me studied letters but ramble as you please.
If your letters are as long as the bible, they will appear short to me. Only let them be brim full of affection.
While old men feel sensibly enough their own advance in years, they do not sufficiently recollect it in those whom they have seenyoung.
If you have to eat crow, eat it while it’s young and tender.
The colleges of Edinburgh and Geneva as seminaries of science, are considered as the two eyes of Europe. While Great Britain and America give the preference to the former, all other countries give it to the latter.
Perseverance in object, though not by the most direct way, is often more laudable than perpetual changes, as often as the object shifts light.
A good cause is often injured more by ill-timed efforts of its friends than by the arguments of its enemies. Persuasion, perseverance and patience are the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others.
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God.
Taste cannot be controlled by law. We must resist at all costs any attempt to regulate our individual freedoms and to legislate our personal moralities.
ONLY a government that is AFRAID of its citizens tries to control them.
No society is so precious as that of one’s own family.
The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance.
How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the earth were it not for misgovernment and a diversion of his energies to selfish interests.
The benefit of even limited monopolies is too doubtful, to be opposed to that of their general suppression.
Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.
Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes with an unprepared people a tyranny still of the many, the few, or the one.
Above all I hope that the education of the common people will be attended to so they won’t forget the basic principles of freedom.
I deny the power of the general government to making paper money, or anything else a legal tender.
Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?
Trade liberty for safety or money and you’ll end up with neither. Liberty, like a grain of salt, easily dissolves. The power of questioning – not simply believing – has no friends. Yet liberty depends on it.