The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture. --The Fruit Hunters

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.

Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?

I... [proposed] three distinct grades of education, reaching all classes. 1. Elementary schools for all children generally, rich and poor. 2. Colleges for a middle degree of instruction, calculated for the common purposes of life and such as should be desirable for all who were in easy circumstances. And 3d. an ultimate grade for teaching the sciences generally and in their highest degree... The expenses of [the elementary] schools should be borne by the inhabitants of the county, every one in proportion to his general tax-rate. This would throw on wealth the education of the poor.

I like to see the people awake and alert.

If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.