We will be soldiers, so our sons may be farmers, so their sons may be artists

Every nation has a right to govern itself internally under what forms it pleases, and to change these forms at its own will.

You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile to them the respect of the world, and procure them its praise.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.

Idleness begets ennui, ennui the hypochondriac, and that a diseased body. No laborious person was ever yet hysterical.

Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone.