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.

Everything in life should be done with reflection.

My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.

Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.

Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination - everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell.

I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.

The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.