I do most anxiously wish to see the highest degrees of education given to the higher degrees of genius and to all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to read and understand what is going on in the world and to keep their part of it going on right; for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful superintendence.

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

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.

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

The sun has not caught me in bed in fifty years.

Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.

The ordinary affairs of a nation offer little difficulty to a person of any experience.