Nothing is more incumbent on the old than to know when they should get out of the way and relinquish to younger successors the honors they can no longer earn, and the duties they can no longer perform.

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature.

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

One never really knows how much one has been touched by a place until one has left it.

All men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[If] the nature of ... government [were] a subordination of the civil to the ecclesiastical power, I [would] consider it as desperate for long years to come. Their steady habits [will] exclude the advances of information, and they [will] seem exactly where they [have always been]. And there [the] clergy will always keep them if they can. [They] will follow the bark of liberty only by the help of a tow-rope.

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.