In the environment, every victory is temporary, every defeat permanent.

When the course of events shall have removed you to distant scenes of action where laurels not nurtured with the blood of my country may be gathered, I shall urge sincere prayers for your obtaining every honor and preferment which may gladden the heart of a soldier.

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

[A] spirit of justice and friendly accomodation...is our duty and our interest to cultivate with all nations.

Private enterprise manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal.

Speaking one day to Monsieur de Buffon, on the present ardor of chemical inquiry, he affected to consider chemistry but as cookery, and to place the toils of the laboratory on the footing with those of the kitchen. I think it, on the contrary, among the most useful of sciences, and big with future discoveries for the utility and safety of the human race.

Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands.