Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither.

You may sometimes be much in the Wrong, in owning your being in the Right.

The ancients tell us what is best; but we must learn of the moderns what is fittest.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

Furnished as all Europe now is with Academies of Science, with nice instruments and the spirit of experiment, the progress of human knowledge will be rapid and discoveries made of which we have at present no conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known a hundred years hence.