I do love this people [the French] with all my heart, and think that with a better religion and a better form of government and their present governors their condition and country would be most enviable.

With nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties.

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. In order to flourish, the tree of Liberty needs the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Anarchy [is] necessarily consequent to inefficiency.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

Excessive taxation . . . will carry reason & reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.

What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and power into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate.