Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.

Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.

Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.

It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.

The divine science of government is the science of social happiness, and the blessings of society depend entirely on the constitutions of government.

I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.

Without wishing to damp the ardor of curiosity or influence the freedom of inquiry, I will hazard a prediction that, after the most industrious and impartial researchers, the longest liver of you all will find no principles, institutions or systems of education more fit in general to be transmitted to your posterity than those you have received from your ancestors.