Strive not with your superiors in argument, but always submit your judgment to others with modesty.

Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths . . . ?

To please everybody is impossible; were I to undertake it, I should probably please nobody.

I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species . . . and to disperse the families I have an aversion.

The friendship I have conceived will not be impaired by absence; but it may be no unpleasing circumstance to brighten the chain by a renewal of the covenant.

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Experience has taught us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession, and when the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

It is among the evils, and perhaps not the smallest, of democratical governments, that the people must feel before they will see. When this happens they are roused to action. Hence it is that those kinds of government are so slow.