History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

The attempt of Lavoisier to reform chemical nomenclature is premature. One single experiment may destroy the whole filiation of his terms; and his string of sulphates, sulphites, and sulphures, may have served no end than to have retarded the progress of science by a jargon, from the confusion of which time will be requisite to extricate us.

I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty.

The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom.

No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence.

Still less, let it be proposed that our properties within our own territories shall be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own. The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.

Delay is preferable to error.