To learn, you have to listen. To improve, you have to try.

I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.

An individual, thinking himself injured, makes more noise than a State.

Private enterprise manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal.

Above all I hope that the education of the common people will be attended to so they won't forget the basic principles of freedom.

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error... They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only... If [free enquiry] be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged.

The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen states in the course of eleven years, is but one for each state in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent insurrections.