Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion.

Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be.

I am a revolutionary, so my son can be a farmer, so his son can be a poet.

[I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature. . . . [In] the formation of the American governments . . . it will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of heaven. . . . These governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.