Those are governed best who are governed least.

The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.

Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject, as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is in their interest to go to war.

I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.

Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and bloody persecutions.

Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to God alone.

In matters of principle, stand like a rock.