In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum.

Whatever is enforced by command is more imputed to him who exacts than to him who performs.

I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.

All opinions in the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end, although they differ as to the means of attaining it.

Now, of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest.

We took advantage of [the Indians'] ignorance and inexperience to incline them the more easily toward treachery, lewdness, avarice, and every sort of inhumanity and cruelty, after the example and pattern of our ways.

I give my opinion not as being good, but as being my own.