Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.
Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
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.
The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.
I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.
Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.
That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
We never repent of having eaten too little.
We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.
The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.
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.
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.
It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
In defense of our persons and properties under actual violation, we took up arms. When that violence shall be removed, when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, hostilities shall cease on our part also.
Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?
So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.
In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.