A true patriot will defend his country from its government.

An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

Government as well as religion has furnished its schisms, its persecutions and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people.

Congress has scarcely any thing to employ them, and complain that the place [Washington, D.C.] is remarkably dull.

Long accustomed to the use of European manufactures, [the Cherokee Indians] are as incapable of returning to their habits of skinsand furs as we are, and find their wants the less tolerable as they are occasioned by a war [the American Revolution] the event of which is scarcely interesting to them.

Convinced that the republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind, my prayers & efforts shall be cordially distributed to the support of that we have so happily established. It is indeed an animating thought that, while we are securing the rights of ourselves & our posterity, we are pointing out the way to struggling nations who wish, like us, to emerge from their tyrannies also. Heaven help their struggles, and lead them, as it has done us, triumphantly thro' them.