Never throw off the best affections of nature in the moment when they become most precious to their object; nor fear to extend you hand to save another, lest you should sink yourself.

I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I do not know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things; but they would have been done by others; some of them, perhaps, a little better.

If any doubt has arisen as to me, my country [Virginia] will have my political creed in the form of a "Declaration &c." which I was lately directed to draw. This will give decisive proof that my own sentiment concurred with the vote they instructed us to give.

There is no King, who, with sufficient force, is not always ready to make himself absolute.

Trial by jury is part of the bright constellation which leads to peace, liberty and safety.

Man is not made for the State but the State for man and it derives its just powers only from the consent of the governed.

This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere force.