Honesty is always the best policy.

Democratical States must always feel before they can see: it is this that makes their Governments slow, but the people will be right at last.

It gives me real concern to observe ... that you should think it necessary to distinguish between my personal and public character, and confine your esteem to the former.

The investigation of mathematical truths accustoms the mind to method and correctness in reasoning, and is an employment peculiarly worthy of rational beings.

I regret exceedingly that the disputes between the protestants and Roman Catholics should be carried to the serious alarming height mentioned in your letters. Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause; and I was not without hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy of the present age would have put an effectual stop to contentions of this kind.

The advancement of agriculture, commerce and manufactures, by all proper means, will not, I trust, need recommendation. But I cannot forbear intimating to you the expediency of giving effectual encouragement as well to the introduction of new and useful inventions from abroad, as to the exertions of skill and genius in producing them at home.

By an ambitious chieftain, aiming only to aggrandize himself and establish his power, the subject might have been regarded in a different light; but the designs and actions of Washington centred in nobler objects, the freedom, tranquillity, and happiness of his country, in which he was to participate equally with every other citizen, neither seeking nor expecting any other preeminence than that of having been an instrument in the hand of Providence.