Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour.

None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important.

The foundation on which (our government is) built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a pre-eminence by birth.

It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that [a society without government, as among our Indians] is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population.

Unmerited abuse wounds, while unmerited praise has not the power to heal.

The only way to win money out of a casino is to own one.

But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years.