Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.

A standing army is one of the greatest mischief that can possibly happen.

The truth was that all men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.

With respect to the words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.

Every answer he [President John Adams] gives to his addressers unmasks more and more his principles and views. His language to the young men at Philadelphia is the most abominable and degrading that could fall from the lips of the first magistrate of an independent people, and particularly from a Revolutionary patriot.

A just government has no need for the clergy or the church.

Americans need not fear the federal government because they enjoy the advantage of being armed, which you possess over the people of almost every other nation.