That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.

This ball of liberty, I believe most piously, is now so well in motion that it will roll round the globe. at least the enlightened part of it, for light & liberty go together.

No one, I hope, can doubt my wish to see... all mankind exercising self-government, and capable of exercising it. But the question is not what we wish, but what is practicable.

No nation is drunken where wine is cheap.

[I]t seems that the Cannibals of Europe are going to eat one another again. A war between Russia and Turkey is like the battle of the kite and snake; whichever destroys the other, leaves a destroyer the less for the world.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Men of high learning and abilities are few in every country; and by taking in those who are not so, the able part of the body have their hands tied by the unable.