Nothing is more important for the public wealth than to form and train youth in wisdom and virtue. Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.

Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day.

I never knew a man who was good at making excuses who was good at anything else.

We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.

Security without liberty is called prison.

Cunning proceeds from want of capacity.

When Knaves betray each other, one can scarce be blamed or the other pitied.