Excessive taxation . . . will carry reason & reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.

The law of self-preservation is higher than written law.

History by apprising them [the people] of the past will enable them to judge of the future. . . . It will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men: it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.

How sublime to look down on the workhouse of nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at our feet!

Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject, as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is in their interest to go to war.

A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held, and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man.

Cultivators of the earth are the most virtuous and independent citizens.