There are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe: the public education, and the sub-division of counties into wards. I consider the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on these two hooks.

If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else.

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.

I sincerely wish you may find it convenient to come here. the pleasure of the trip will be less than you expect, but the utility greater. it will make you adore your own country, it's soil, it's climate, it's equality, liberty, laws, people & manners. my god! how little do my countrymen know.

Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality.

If you are obliged to neglect any thing, let it be your chemistry. It is the least useful and the least amusing to a country gentleman of all the ordinary branches of science.

The diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration.