What is it men cannot be made to believe!

Men fight for freedom; then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.

ours are the only farmers who can read Homer

The law for religious freedom... [has]put down the aristocracy of the clergy and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind.

I sincerely join you in abjuring all political connection with every foreign power; and tho I cordially wish well to the progress of liberty in all nations, and would forever give it the weight of our countenance, yet they are not to be touched without contamination from their other bad principles. Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality.

There is not a single crowned head in Europe whose talents or merit would entitle him to be elected a vestryman by the people of any parish in America.