There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors. This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favor, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.

Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended

On being asked what condition of man he considered the most pitiable: A lonesome man on a rainy day who does not know how to read.

When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.

Chess is so interesting in itself, as not to need the view of gain to induce engaging in it; and thence it is never played for money

Evil, as evil, can never be chosen; and though evil is often the effect of our own choice, yet we never desire it but under the appearance of an imaginary good.

God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice, either here or hereafter.