Dependence begets subservience and paves the way for tyranny.

There is... an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendency.

The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes.

Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable for, not the rightness, but the uprightness of the decision

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.

Our people shall be free

Too old to plant trees for my own gratification, I shall do it for my posterity.