There never was a good knife made of bad steel.

The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but it is still nonsense.

This [the U.S. Constitution] is likely to be administered for a course of years and then end in despotism... when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.

Presumption first blinds a man, then sets him a running.

An autobiography usually reveals nothing bad about its writer except his memory.

Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure, and trouble therewith.

Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of the soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality, but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it. In this field the soul has room enough to expand herself, to display all her boundless faculties, and all her beautiful and interesting extravagancies and absurdities.