People generally have more feeling for canals and roads than education. However, I hope we can advance them with equal pace.

I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier.

It is better to have no ideas than false ones.

The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights

I thank heaven that the 4th. of July is over. It is always a day of great fatigue to me, and of some embarrassments from improper intrusions and some from unintended exclusions.

One single object . . . [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation.

If any doubt has arisen as to me, my country [Virginia] will have my political creed in the form of a "Declaration &c." which I was lately directed to draw. This will give decisive proof that my own sentiment concurred with the vote they instructed us to give.