I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared

I leave to others the sublime delights of riding in the storm, better pleased with sound sleep & a warmer berth below it encircled, with the society of neighbors, friends & fellow laborers of the earth rather than with spies & sycophants ... I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office.

Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.

The Constitution on which our Union rests, shall be administered by me [as President] according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people of the United States at the time of its adoption - a meaning to be found in the explanations of those who advocated, not those who opposed it, and who opposed it merely lest the construction should be applied which they denounced as possible.

The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.

And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and libraries of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them.