We could in the United States make as great a variety of wines as are made in Europe, not exactly of the same kinds, but doubtless as good.

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.

The issuing power [of money] should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

I am myself an empiric in natural philosophy, suffering my faith to go no further than my facts. I am pleased, however, to see the efforts of hypothetical speculation, because by the collisions of different hypotheses, truth may be elicited and science advanced in the end.

May [our Declaration of Independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government... All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.

Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry.