A government of our own is our natural right; and when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced, that it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance.
Ye that dare oppose, not only tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!
Thus commerce, though in itself a moral nullity, has had a considerable influence in tempering the human mind... he trades with the same countries... (that he) would have gone to war with.
The times that tried men’s souls are over-and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished.
The Sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.
Now is the seedtime of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now, will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters.
Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.
I detest the Bible as I detest everything that is cruel.
Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them.
Public money ought to be touched with the most scrupulous consciousness of honor.
The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind.
Compassion, the fairest associate of the heart.
He, who survives his reputation, lives out of despite himself, like a man listening to his own reproach.
The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety.
Christianity is the strangest religion ever set up, for it committed a murder upon Jesus in order to redeem mankind from the sin of eating an apple.
We do not admit the authority of the church with respect to its pretended infallibility, its manufactured miracles, its setting itself up to forgive sins. It was by propagating that belief and supporting it with fire that she kept up her temporal power.
It is a faculty of the human mind to become what it contemplates, and to act in unison with its object.
He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.
There is something in corruption which, like a jaundiced eye, transfers the color of itself to the object it looks upon, and sees everything stained and impure.
Those words, temperate and moderate, are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing, moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice.