Whiskey claims to itself alone the exclusive office of sot-making.

Everything is useful which contributes to fix the principles and practices of virtue.

The plough is to the farmer what the wand is to the sorcerer. Its effect is really like sorcery.

Public employment contributes neither to advantage nor happiness. It is but honorable exile from one's family and affairs.

We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities. Unmeddling with the affairs of other nations, we had hoped that our distance and our dispositions would have left us free, in the example and indulgence of peace with all the world.

The purse of the people is the real seat of sensibility. Let it be drawn upon largely, and they will then listen to truths which could not excite them through any other organ.

I am convinced that those societies (such as the Native American peoples) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, & restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves & sheep. I do not exaggerate.