My confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses.

Travelling is good for your health and necessary for your amusement.

The possession of facts is knowledge; the use of them is wisdom.

A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states, in a great one. 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep.

[A]lthough a republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible.