All we can do is to make the best of our friends, love and cherish what is good in them, and keep out of the way what is bad.

It may be regarded as certain that not a foot of land will ever be taken from the Indians without their own consent.

If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling and indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less rights in himself than one of his neighbors, or indeed all of them put together. This would be slavery, and not that liberty which the bill of rights has made inviolable, and for the preservation of which our government has been charged.

Of all exercises, walking is the best.

The only security of all is in a free press.

On the subject of the history of the American Revolution, you ask who shall write it? Who can write it? And who will ever be able to write it? Nobody, except merely its external facts... all its councils, designs and discussions having been conducted by Congress [behind] closed doors - and no members, as far as I know, having even made notes of them. These, which are the life and soul of history, must forever be unknown.

A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.