Man is not made for the State but the State for man and it derives its just powers only from the consent of the governed.
Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
Never spend your money before you have earned it.
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
The God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?
Good wine is a necessity of life for me.
That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.
Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us.
The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.
The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys.
Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.
He who knows best knows how little he knows.
To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.
To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.
Man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do.