Our business is to have great credit and to use it little.

...is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance? ...the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless.

If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

The only thing a man can take beyond this lifetime is his ethics.

But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.

My reason for fixing them in office for a term of years, rather than for life, was that they might have an idea that they were at a certain period to return into the mass of the people and become the governed instead of the governors which might still keep alive that regard to the public good that otherwise they might perhaps be induced by their independence to forget.

I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality.