All poetry is misrepresentation.

All government is a trust. Every branch of government is a trust, and immemorially acknowledged to be so.

The spirit of dogmatic theology poisons anything it touches.

How is property given? By restraining liberty; that is, by taking it away so far as necessary for the purpose. How is your house made yours? By debarring every one else from the liberty of entering it without your leave.

Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.

Lawsuits generally originate with the obstinate and the ignorant, but they do not end with them; and that lawyer was right who left all his money to the support of an asylum for fools and lunatics, saying that from such he got it, and to such he would bequeath it.

The request of industry to government is as modest as that of Diogenes to Alexander: Get out of my light.